Lunchtime Trader: Marcus de Maria

t h e
lunchtime
TR ADER Marcus de Maria
Learn to trade and invest yourself to

financial freedom in just 20 minutes per day
The
Lunchtime
Trader
LEARN TO TRADE AND INVEST YOURSELF
TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM IN JUST 20
MINUTES PER DAY.
Marcus de Maria
Published by Investment Mastery Trading Ltd
2 | MARCUS DE MARIA
Copyright © 2020 by Marcus de Maria.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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The information presented by Investment Mastery or any of
its staff is for educational purposes. Any examples used are for
educational and illustrative purposes only. Investment
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advisor. They are not recommending particular stocks,
options, forex, CFD, spreadbetting, cryptocurrencies or
securities of any kind.
The names of any firms of stockbroker, stock exchange,

financial institutions, financial planners, bookmakers, or
financial websites mentioned are for illustrative purposes
only. The decision on which company to use if any is at the
THE LUNCHTIME TRADER | 3
total discretion of each individual person. It is recommended

that you seek a professional licensed broker prior to
implementing any investment program or financial plan.
Investment Mastery cannot guarantee any results or

investment returns based on the information you receive. You
must read and understand the above and be aware of the risks
of all trading and investing and be willing to accept them
before investing. Trading stocks, options, forex, CFD,
spreadbetting or securities has large potential rewards, but
also large potential risks. Stock market trading is not
appropriate for all investors. Past performance and any
examples or testimonials cited are no indication or guarantee
of anticipated future results. Individual results will vary and
cannot be guaranteed.
4 | MARCUS DE MARIA
Author: Marcus de Maria

Publishing Company: Investment Mastery Trading
Ltd, The Kinetic Centre, Theobald Street
Elstree, Herts. United Kingdom WD6 4PJ
Phone: 44 (0)203 699 9951
Website: investment-mastery.com
Ordering Information:
For details on our Stock Market, Crypto or Forex
trading training events, home study or online
courses, and clubs please contact us:
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The Lunchtime Trader by Marcus de Maria

4th edition
Contents
CH AP T E R 1 W H Y M O ST PEO PL E S T R U G G L E,
B UT Y O U C A N B E O N E O F T HE F I NA NC I A L
ELI TE 11
CH AP T E R 2 W H Y T H E S T O CK M A R K E T C AN BE
YO U R VEH I C LE TO FI N A N C I A L F R E E D O M 2 9
CH AP T E R 3 T HE P OW E R OF C OM P O U N D
G R O WT H - L E A R N HO W T O T UR N £ 2 K I N T O
O VER £ 2 M I L L I O N 5 9
C H A P TER 4 W H ER E YO U C A N SA F E L Y I N V E S T
Y O UR M O N E Y 7 3
C H A P TER 5 SI M P LE I N V E S T M EN T S T R AT E G I E S
I N 1 0 M I N UT E S PER M O N T H O R W E E K : PCA ,
VC A & B U Y SELL ZO N ES 10 1
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CH AP T E R 6 T R AD I N G S T R A T E G I E S - B U Y S E L L
Z O NE S AD V A NC E D & BU F F AL O 12 1
CH AP T E R 7 HO W T O M A K E M O NE Y W I T H
V E R T I C A LLY RI SI N G ( A N D F A LLI N G ) B U F F A LO
S T O CKS 1 3 7
CH APT E R 8 M I N I M I S E YO U R RI SK ; M A XI M I SE
Y O UR G A I NS 1 5 5
CH AP T E R 9 A B E GI NNE R S GU I DE T O
PR O F I T I N G F RO M C R Y P T O CU R R E N CI ES 1 79
CH AP T E R 10 Y O U R M O D E L F O R PR O V E N
S U C C E S S 21 1
C H A P T ER 1 1 H O W TO TA K E YO U R FI R ST S T E P
T O BI G S U CCE S S 2 17
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to all of you who have struggled

financially for years and now have the courage to break
out of your old beliefs and habits to win a new future for
yourself and your family. For these individuals this book
has been written as help and assistance. I commend your
courage and wish you every success. The hardest bit is
starting. Just start and you will be surprised by yourself.
You can do it!
8 | MARCUS DE MARIA
If you have further questions, please contact Investment

Mastery. Our regular business hours are Mon-Fri. 9:00
am – 5:30 pm U.K. time. During these hours, you can
reach us by phone or email. Outside of these hours,
either leave a message or email us and we will reply
within 48 hours.
Phone: +44 (0)203 699 9951

Email: [email protected]
FOREWORD
The idea behind The Lunchtime Trader is simple: If you

are working 8-10 hours a day for someone else, making
them money, are you at least spending 20 mins a day
during your lunchtime ensuring that you are creating
wealth for yourself and your family? You are
there anyway, you probably have access to a computer
and the internet, so why not use the time while
munching on your sandwich?
I have to say I didn’t expect it to take off as much as it did.

In one year, the book has been translated into Italian,
Polish and German with Spanish on the way, and 20,000
copies downloaded.
The markets in the meantime have done what markets

do, which is to change. Interest rates continue to be at
historic lows (generally good for stocks) with talk of them
rising again; Gold (a play on the rising dollar), Silver and
Oil continue to fall, allowing us opportunities to get in at
lower prices using VCA (see Chapters 5-7); QE seems to
have slowed down but if things turn bad no doubt will
resume again; stocks are starting to move more
sideways, allowing us good buying and shorting
10 | MARCUS DE MARIA
opportunities; China is the talk of the year, with their

economy slowing (but still stronger than everyone else
let’s not forget) and their currency becoming one of the
world’s reserve currencies.
And as ever the more things change the more they are
the same for a Lunchtime Trader, who knows how to take
advantage of up, down and sideways markets.
I have updated the charts and ensured that the content

is simple and fun to read. This is a subject that just
doesn’t need to be boring or difficult.
I hope you not only enjoy it but take action on one of the
many demo accounts or virtual traders out there, and I
hope we get the chance to meet in person at one of our
events around Europe.
Marcus de Maria
The Lunchtime Trader
Email: [email protected]
C H APT ER O N E
WHY MOST PEOPLE

STRUGGLE BUT YOU
CAN BE ONE OF THE
FINANCIAL ELITE
Larry looked at his computer screen with a smile on his

face. He had barely touched his sandwich, he was so
excited. He was financially free, a net worth millionaire.
When he thought how far he had come, he felt a moment
of pride. He couldn’t wait to share the news with his wife
when he got home, he grabbed the phone to text her, but
stopped, wanting to tell her himself. To see the look in
her eyes when he told her that she needn’t worry any
more. That if she wanted to, she could choose to go part-
time or no longer work. He felt proud. He felt like a man
- providing for his wife and children.
As he looked around the office, he wondered what all his

co-workers would think if they knew. If only they had
listened to him. Now he could show them how to do it.
He finished his sandwich in three bites, rubbed his hands
together in excitement and went back to work.
Why is it that some people manage to achieve great

wealth while others are never able to even rub two
pennies together? Why are these results so very
different?
The quick answer to that is; the actions we take. The

actions we take lead to the results we achieve.
So the question then is what drives our actions? The

answer is; our thoughts, and the emotions around those
thoughts. These thoughts, and specifically the feelings
these thoughts give us, propel us to action – or inaction.
And these actions dictate our results (or lack of results).
It is not our parents, the government, our boss, the

economy, the stock market etc. that is to blame for our
financial success, mediocrity or failure. It is us, or rather
our thoughts, beliefs and attitude.
When we finally see that our thoughts, beliefs and

attitude are the cause of our financial results, good or
bad – and we stop blaming everyone and everything
around us, we can start to improve our finances. Not
before.
I strongly suggest you read the above paragraphs again,

slowly …
Your current financial situation is the result of the many

decisions you have made over time. Anything you do
over and over becomes a habit. We unconsciously run
the same patterns without realising it and wonder why
our financial situation always stays the same.
If you want to change your current financial situation or

speed it up, you need to consciously do things differently.
You need to consciously create new habits. A new habit,
say spending 20 – 30 minutes a day either in the morning,
during your lunchtime or in the evening working on
growing your wealth, will work wonders over time.
You would be amazed at how

small incremental steps,
taken every day, can
dramatically change your
financial future.
So where do we start to change these actions taken over

and over? How do we start to change these habits?
1. Give yourself a reality check (pain) and ensure

it stays with you
2. Find out where you want to go (this is not that
easy)
3. Choose a vehicle that will get you to where
you want to go the fastest
4. Form beliefs about your vehicle that you can
do it, and build on those beliefs
5. Start
6. Get better at it
7. Speed up the process
Give yourself a reality check

i.e. some pain
a.k.a. where are you now?
There’s a story about a man driving to the airport. Lost,

he sees a local leaning against a fence by the road. The
man stops to ask him for directions. “Excuse me”, he
says, “what is the best way to the airport please?” The
local, still leaning on the fence thinks for a minute and
says, “Well, I can tell you how to get there, but I wouldn’t
start from here”.
In all journeys, including the exciting one you’re about to

embark on, you have to start from where you are right at
this moment. Not where you would like to be, or even
where you think or hope you are, but where you actually
are. In other words, a reality check.
“Many people take no care of their money

till they come nearly to the end of it, and
others do just the same with their time.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Marcus’ Story
I had just quit my job because among other things, I felt
disillusioned by the lack of control I had over my own life
– I remember telling my boss some dates I wanted to take
off for a holiday and he told me, “I decide what dates you
take off, not you!” It wasn’t so much what he said, it was
the way he said it that shocked me. He was aggressive
almost angry, as if it was his right to control me in this
way.
After that my brother and I decided to start with a
network marketing company. After two years working
really hard we were stars in the organisation, feted and
honoured on stage, but there was one tiny problem, WE
WEREN’T MAKING ANY MONEY! And as soon as we made
any we were encouraged to spend it again by flying off to
international conventions with the team to motivate
them. Long story short, network marketing is a three to
five-year game plan, and we just didn’t have that time,
we needed the money now.
At this stage I was £50,000 in debt and sleeping on my
brother’s floor. You may be thinking, “Marcus, I’ve got a
mortgage bigger than that”, but I didn’t even have that.
This £50,000 was bad debt with nothing to show for it and
no assets to my name. I needed money right now. What
would you have done? Got a job? That’s what my parents

urged me to do. Most people probably would have done.
But I had already ticked that box and decided it wasn’t for
me.
Crazily, you may think, I decided against my parents’
advice. This time an acquaintance approached me about
what I saw as a really amazing opportunity, investing in
a start-up company he was managing. He had hooked up
with an inventor who had a cool invention to do with
men’s urinals. Before making a decision, I asked a lot of
questions – to this day the inventor still says I asked more
questions than anyone has ever asked him before or
since. I wanted to be sure. Then when I was satisfied I
made a decision to invest. I figured that men have to pee
so there had to be a market there with repeat business.
I will never forget the moment when we had negotiated
a deal for the shares; the CEO shook my hand and pulled
me towards him, off-balance, and looked me straight in
the eye and said, “You have 2 months to raise £100,000.
I don’t care whether you eat or sleep but I expect you to
keep to your side of the deal”. Wow - those words – and
the way he said them – rang in my ears. I had to get that
money! The problem was I just didn’t have it. What to do?
I couldn’t just give up so I turned to the three F’s - Friends,
Family and… Fools. They must have believed in
me because I managed to raise about £100,000 to invest

in this new company. Just one problem, if I wasn’t in deep
enough before, now I was seriously in debt, so this baby
really had to work.
For the next year I was working for virtually nothing,
making sure that my money and the money of my three
F’s was going to be safe. I helped the company with sales,
something I’d never done before… and it showed. We
didn’t make many sales, but we did get our product into
key flagship locations, which turned out to be very
important indeed.
One day I woke up and discovered that the CEO had run
away with my £100,000 and I was left high and dry
without even a share certificate. So now I had my original
£50,000 debt plus an additional £100,000, half of which
was strictly not my debt but I felt as if it was – when
family and friends are involved it’s not a good feeling.
Luckily, I had developed a great relationship with the
inventor of the product and we set about forming another
company, replacing the shares, attracting venture capital
and doing things the right way. The company was
eventually sold to a big international washroom company
for just under £10 million a few years later. After a lot of
hard work and pain it all turned out ok.
Let’s fast forward several years. We now own property in

the UK and abroad, and have invested in many promising
start-ups, one with the same partner whose business we
sold earlier. Our main focus though is trading and
investing. We have a team of traders to trade our money
for us, and a highly successful training and education
business, Investment Mastery, which recently celebrated
its 10-year anniversary. In that time, we have taught
thousands of individuals how to become financially free
through trading stocks and forex. We are currently in the
process of setting up a fund structure, where people can
keep their money in their own accounts, but it is linked to
the account that we trade.
So, you see if I can do it you can do it too. Unless you
started out with £150,000 or more in debt, like me, then
you are in a better starting position than I was.
Your Net Worth calculation
Ok so what about you - where are you starting from

financially? What is your Net Worth?
Your net worth is the only real measure of your current

financial situation. Most people think it is how much
money they make, but that’s irrelevant. It is not how
much you make but how much you have been able to
save and then grow all these years.
So please go ahead now and take the time to

approximately calculate your net worth:
Everything Everything you owe

you own
House £ Mortgage £
Investments £ Debts £
Money in £ Credit £
the bank Cards
Other £ Loans £
£ £
Other Other
Total £ Total £
Subtract
one from
the other
and that
will give
you your
Net Worth £
If you find this difficult to do, you may want to ask some
trusted family or friends to do this calculation with you.
Now comes the important part. Look at your Net Worth

figure. How does that make you FEEL? Take a second to
think about this – really FEEL it.
Is it more than you thought? Great just imagine what

would happen if you really went for it? Or is it less than
you thought? It’s not too late - isn’t it time you focused
on growing it?
By the way, is your financial situation better than mine?

I was - £150,000 in debt. I think you are probably better
off than me starting this new journey, so just think about
this: if I can do it, you can definitely do it!
Critical Net Worth

The only financial goal you will ever need
Why is your Net Worth so important? Because when you

have grown it enough, you will be financially free. This is
called your Critical Net Worth (CNW).
Here’s how it works. How much do you think you need a

year to live off, £50,000, £75,000, £100,000, £150,000,
more? Let’s say your aim was to have £50,000 coming in
every year. This comes in every year without you going
to work. In other words, it is £50,000 of passive income.
Then you would need to have a net worth of £1,000,000

sitting in a safe investment that makes 5% a year. That
5% of £1,000,000 will give you £50,000 a year.
Remember, tax will be taken off your £50,000, so you will
either need to grow your Net Worth larger than
£1,000,000 or have a larger % return on your investment.
Just 1% extra, i.e. 6% instead of 5% means that you are
earning £60,000 instead of £50,000 on your £1,000,000.
At 10% a year you will have £100,000 a year of passive
income.
You might be looking at that £1,000,000 number and

thinking that this will take me a long time to get to. You
will discover how long it will take when we look at
compound growth in Chapter 3. But what if you were
able to make 10% a year safely? With the Buffalo strategy
we are looking to make up to 35% a year. With the VCA
strategy we are looking to make up to 15% a year. My
traders in my trading room made 86% last year and are
already up 71% this year with another 3 months of
trading to go. So, 10% shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
Well the good news is that at 10% you only need
£500,000 as your CNW to get your £50,000 a year from
your investments. And at 20% a year, you only need
£250,000 as your CNW to get your £50,000 a year from
your investments.
So now you know what your focus is going to be. It is on

growing your net worth so that you can reach your CNW
as soon as possible. The only reason that I am a multi-
millionaire now is because I had a lot of mental pain
being so massively in debt and therefore made a decision
to change my way of thinking in order to create wealth.
Basically, I am financially successful because I have spent
the last few years focusing on growing my Net Worth to
achieve my CNW.
It’s not magic. It’s called Focus.
If I had been focusing on other things I would NOT be in

the position I am in now. Whatever you spend your time
and effort on over a longer period of time, will grow. It is
a law of nature. It also makes logical sense. So now you
know that your focus is to grow your Net Worth so that
it reaches your desired Critical Net Worth. It won’t be
magic. It will be called Focus.
We believe that a great way of doing this is via trading

and investing. The reason is because it is the fastest way
to compound your money with the least amount of
effort. I love property and business, but trading and
investing allows you to massively leverage your time. And
the way we are going to teach you how to do it, is in
addition to everything you are doing right now. You don’t
have to give up your job, business or property investing.
SUMMARY
In this chapter we discovered…
• Why some people create wealth and others

will never be able to
• The journey I had to go through – and if you

are not £150,000 in bad debt you are starting
off in a better situation than me
• Understanding the importance of Net Worth

and how to calculate yours
• Knowing how to target your wealth building

and the significance of your Critical Net
Worth
CH A P TE R TW O
WHY THE STOCK

MARKET CAN BE YOUR
VEHICLE TO FINANCIAL
FREEDOM
What is the stock market?
The stock market is a market where stocks and shares of

companies are publicly traded. “Stocks” is the American
way of saying “shares”. So, a share is literally a share of
the company you are investing in. And as soon as you buy
even one share, you are a shareholder in that company
with certain rights. These rights include voting at General
Meetings for example. You could also receive dividends.
Dividends are paid out by some companies as a thank you
for keeping the stock.
Ok, well that is the official version anyway. For me the

stock market is a huge vault, which has a lot of money in
it, waiting for someone to find the key or combination to
open it up. The main challenge is that in the stock market
there are a lot of different ways of making money, and
you have to choose some strategies that are the right
ones FOR YOU. Once you have found them – and we
teach them in this book – then you just need to follow
some simple rules.
What is the difference between trading and investing?

Trading is when you buy a stock and sell it in the short
term i.e. days to weeks. Investing is when you buy a
stock and sell it in the long term i.e. months to years. We

teach both and also a mixture of both – we tend to hold
our stocks for days to months and on average 6 weeks.
You might even say we have invented a new way called
TradInvesting – the best of both worlds.
The main problem is that most people have never

learned how to trade (or invest). And because they have
never learned how to trade, they make some very basic
mistakes. Here’s one – most people give their money to
someone else to invest. That is the worst mistake of all –
not taking control of your own finances. I did that once.
I remember in the early nineties I had invested in a

technology fund because I thought it would be a great
idea to give my money to the professionals to invest.
After all they are the experts and would grow my money
for me. I didn’t really take much notice of the annual
reports they sent because nothing much seemed to be
happening, but one fine day I received the annual report
and I noticed something very shocking. My account was
down by 70%! I felt shocked, slightly dazed, but also, I
assumed that there must be a mistake, because surely a
professional investor wouldn’t allow that to happen.
So, I phoned up the company, my heart pounding, and

spoke to a customer service lady. I asked her to please
see if this was correct, surely there must be a mistake.
She said there wasn’t. When I insisted, she asked me to
hold on and she would talk to her manager. “Aha!” I
thought, “I knew it, this is just a mistake, they are going
to sort it out now”. The lady came back on the phone,
and I don’t think I will ever forget her words: “Hello Mr
de Maria, thanks for waiting, I have checked, but there is
no record of you instructing us in writing, or via email,
phone, fax or telephone that you wanted us to sell.”
This lady was basically telling me that even though I paid
management fees to the fund to manage my money for
me, it was my duty to tell them when to get out! I realized
right there and then that I had to take control of my
finances. For a start, I figured I could do better than -70%!
Secondly even if I didn’t do very well, I would learn from
my mistakes, whereas when you give your money to
someone else you can’t learn from their mistakes.
It was a lesson well learned and a good thing it happened,

because it spurred me on to master trading and
investing.
Another mistake is doing buy and hold. This is where you

buy a stock and simply hold it. So, it goes up and you hold
it. It goes sideways and you hold it. It goes down and you
hold it. This is not a very good strategy, because there are
no rules to take your profit. So you can buy, it goes up
10%, 20%, 30%, 40%. Great. But because you are a long
term buy and holder you don’t even take your profits,
and so it goes from 40% profit to 30% profit then 20%
profit then 10% then 0 then -10% -20% etc. Really not a
good strategy.
Another mistake is not using a stop loss. What is a stop

loss? It is an electronic order that stops your losses. Once
you tell the broker like: YourTradingBroker.com, that you
don’t want to lose more than 1% of your portfolio then it
doesn’t matter whether you are there or not. You could
be at work, on holiday etc. but if it goes down more than
1% you are out of the stock automatically. Not having a
stop loss is a big mistake to make.
Why the stock market?
In my first book, “The Wealth Workout – the 7 Step

Process to Financial Freedom”, we discussed what I call,
The 5 Pillars of Wealth.
The most popular choices, to help you become wealthy

or financially independent in the shortest possible time,
are:
• Your job, or if you take it seriously, your career

• Owning your own, traditional business
• Investing or trading in property
• Investing or trading in stocks or other vehicles
like foreign exchange, precious metals like
gold and silver, or commodities like oil
• Marketing a service or product on the internet
Copyright © 2020 Investment Mastery Trading Limited.

The 20 reasons why the stock market

is a great way to make money
1. It is not hampered by other people

Imagine this - no staff, no customers, no boss. That
should be enough in itself - no staff expenses, training or
aggravations; no customers to have to please, win over
and retain, and no colleagues or boss telling you what to
do.
2. It is accessible to all
Regardless of how old you are, whether you are male or
female, regardless of your physical ability, anyone can do
it. That is not the case with property or starting your own
business.
3. It requires surprisingly low starting capital

compared to property or business
This is usually a surprise for people. While you have to
spend thousands on property and thousands on a
business, in the stock market you can start with about
£2,000 or even £500 - that's a lot less, isn’t it?
And you don't even need that - you can start practising
and improving your skills on a simulator / or virtual
trader. It is the same as the real thing: you enter and exit
the trades, based on market prices, just like the real
thing, but the money is not yours: it is virtual money.
Also, there are no up-front fees (for example, for
transferring money), no legal fees, marketing fees,
mortgage brokers, and if you are investing in US, which
we suggest, then no stamp duty.
4. It has total time flexibility

This really does depend on your lifestyle - there are daily
strategies, weekly strategies, monthly strategies and
yearly strategies. The trick is to choose one that fits into
your lifestyle. If it doesn’t fit your lifestyle, you won’t do
it consistently well.
5. It has total location flexibility

Since all we need is the internet – you have total
flexibility. You can be in any room in the house, in any
house in the world, or be travelling.
6. It requires minimal training

You don't need an MBA or PhD to do this; you just need
a good course to teach you the basics, and then practice,
practice, practice.
7. It is guaranteed to exist in the future

They are not going to decide to cancel the stock market.
8. There are no competitors - In fact, the more

the better
Firstly, there are no competitors - you are not fighting
against anyone else but yourself and remember: the
more people buy the stock you are in, the better.
9. It is recession proof – you can make

money faster when stocks go down
Did you know more millionaires are made in a recession
than at any other time? So if a stock, sector, industry or
the entire market starts to go down, this is when you can
make the most money fast.
And get this – when the market goes sideways, when

normally you think you can’t make any money, this is
when you can make a lot of money in the stock market.
10. There is no product/stock holding

required
You don't need to purchase any inventory or have a
garage full of stock.
11. It has low overheads and easy admin

The only overheads you have are your internet
connection, your brokerage fees and if you have to pay
for it, your charting software. That’s it!
12. You don’t have to borrow money

You can if you want to, but you don’t have to, whereas in
property (and sometimes in business), you do have to
borrow money and get a mortgage.
13. There are no meetings

The biggest time wasters in the world, that are needed
for business and property, are not needed in the stock
market.
14. There’s no physical labour

Unlike in property, and some businesses, because there
is nothing to build or maintain.
15. You are in control at all times

This surprises some people. Let's imagine you have a
stock and you decide you want to get out. You click a
button and 5 seconds later you are out. Can you do that
with a property? In 10 minutes, days, weeks? Can you do

that with your business?
16. There’s a potential for a huge profit

margin
One of the reasons for this is the small starting capital but
also because you can buy something and sell it almost
immediately when the stock goes in your direction (see
above).
17. It’s passive income: you can earn it whilst

you’re sleeping
There are two reasons for this: the first is after-hours
trading - the institutions trade when the market is closed
to us mere mortals. The second is that you can sell
options, which allows you to take advantage of time
ticking - literally amazing!
18. You can teach your children

Imagine learning this when you were much younger! We
have graduates who get their children to do the filtering
of stocks for them. It is like a game for children because
looking at charts can be highly visual. Then the parents
can come along and do the rest while the children play
with other, less educational toys.
19. It develops an abundant mentality faster

With the stock market you can measure whether you are
doing well or not within a very short period of time. This
way you can change your approach and correct any
mistakes you are making much faster than you could in
your business and certainly much faster than in property.
20. The better you get, the more ££s you

make
This is incredible - can you imagine being in a job and your
boss rewarding you every time you get better? And
promoting you above him when you are better than he
is? In the stock market, this is the case – you can make
more money, the better you get – and there is no ceiling.
Have you ever practised a computer game and you

became so good after practising for hours? So you can
keep practising and getting better. That is precisely why
you want to go on a virtual trader before committing
your real money.
Marketing
Comparison Chart Job Business Property Stock
on Internet
1. Is it free from being hampered

No No No Maybe Yes
by other people?
2. Is it accessible to all? No No No Yes Yes
3. Does it require only low starting
- No No Maybe Yes
capital?
4. Does it have total time
No No No Maybe Yes
flexibility?
5. Does it have total location
No No No Maybe Yes
flexibility?
6. Does it require minimal
No No No Maybe Yes
training?
7. Is it guaranteed to exist in the
No No Yes No Yes
future?
8. Are the more competitors there
No No No No Yes
are the better?
9. Is it recession proof? No No No No Yes
10. Is there no product or stock
- No No Maybe Yes
holding?
11. Does it have low overheads
- No No Maybe Yes
and easy admin?
12. Can you do it without
Yes No No Yes Yes
borrowing money?
13. Are there no meetings? No No No Maybe Yes
14. Is there no physical labour
Maybe No No Yes Yes
required?
15. Are you in control at all times? No No No Yes Yes
16. Is there a huge potential profit
No Yes Yes Maybe Yes
margin?
17. Do you earn money whilst you
No Maybe Maybe Maybe Yes
are asleep?
18. Can you teach your children to
do it?
19. Does it develop an abundant
mentality fast?
20. Do you make more money the
better you get?
As you can see, the stock market is by no means the only

vehicle to get you where you want to go. However, I am
here to tell you that it is the easiest for a beginner and
the simplest, fastest way to get started, especially if you
are serious about making money.
And this is on top of everything else you are doing – we

are not asking you to stop or change doing anything.
This is just 20 minutes a day tops.
There are several ways to become wealthy. Normally,

although not always, it involves you doing something
outside of your daily activities.
During the day you work hard for your money but in
your spare time, in just 20 minutes a day (mornings,
lunchtime, evenings or weekends), you must ensure
your money works hard for you.
That is the basic premise for becoming wealthy.

You might want to read the paragraph above again.
We believe that the stock market is a great way to do this.

In fact, we believe it is the most misunderstood of all the
wealth creation vehicles. If you ask the average person in

the street they will not know about it. They will have
ideas about business and property but when it
comes to stocks they will not know.
Here are some questions you might have, which we will

answer one by one:
1. Is it really possible to make money?
2. Is it possible for ME to make money?
3. If it’s so simple how come everyone isn’t

doing it?
4. Am I going to have the time?
5. Do I have enough money to start?

1. Is it possible to make money in

stocks?
We’ve been teaching people for ten years how to make

3% a month (not a year), that’s 36% a year on their
savings, by spending as little as 20 minutes a day either
in the morning, lunchtime or evening. And year after year
individuals just like you go on to achieve just that and
much more. Most had no experience whatsoever, none
of their family or friends were doing this, but once they
saw our traders doing it and more importantly other
graduates – all normal people – doing it month-on-
month, they knew it was possible. And so they too
started achieving it.
But you have to believe that it is possible to make money

in stocks. I suggest you take a look at the back of this book
at the case studies we have recorded of people making
money trading and investing using our strategies. As you
will see they are normal people coming from all walks of
life. There is nothing special about these people apart
from the desire to get ahead and that they were open
and willing to follow the rules we taught them.
2. Is it possible for me to make money?
Most people believe that they cannot make money in

stocks. The City and the media have done a great job in
convincing us that we should give them our money to
invest so they can live off the management fees. If you
ask the average person in the street, they literally know
nothing about it. Let me ask you: Did your parents teach
you about it? No. Did you learn about it at school? No.
Did the Government teach you about it? No. But what
we do know is that you should give your money to the
experts, because they know better than you how to grow
your money.
This is just not true. With the right strategies and a bit of
effort you can actually outperform the so-called experts.
In fact, I am going to prove it to you. Did you know that
you actually have MORE chance of making money than
the professionals? The reason is simple – it is because
they are governed by the FCA, which governs anyone
who is trading other people’s money. They have put up
some rules that make it very difficult for fund managers
to make money. Let me show you.
There are 5 reasons why you have MORE chance of

making money than the professionals, mainly because of
the regulations they are under due to the fact that they
are investing other people's money. Five! Not one or two
but five! If this doesn't convince you then nothing will. So
here goes:
The 5 Reasons why you have more chance

of making money than
the professionals
Reason One - Professionals are limited in what they

can invest in. We are not.
Imagine a fund called Pan European Growth Utilities

Fund. Sounds good? You invest your savings and hope for
the best. After all, they are the professionals.
After a few months it is clear that not much is happening

in the utilities sector. But in an inter-departmental
meeting, our fund manager hears from the technology
fund manager that the technology sector is hot right now
and roaring ahead, chalking up massive gains. The
technology fund manager's office is right next door to our
fund manager's office. Can our fund manager knock on

his colleague’s door, get some expert advice, and invest
instead in the technology market?
We wish!
Our utilities fund can only invest in gas, water or

electricity companies because it is a utilities fund, not a
technology fund.
No matter, our savvy fund manager can look to the East

at the growth markets that are China and India to find
some undiscovered gem there, right?
We wish!
Didn't you read the brochure? It's a Pan-European fund

so only European utility companies are allowed.
We, on the other hand, can invest in anything and any
company we want to. It is our money we are investing
and so are not regulated in this way.
Funds HAVE to invest even when it is best to stay in cash.

We can stay in cash.
As a professional, there might be times when the market

is not looking so bullish and it might be time to get out of
the markets and stay in cash. Right?
We wish!
Reason Two – Funds can take weeks to get in and out

of stock – we can get in and out of companies in
seconds.
Imagine a fund, like a pension fund, with billions to

invest. They decide to make a new investment. The speed
with which they can buy shares depends on how many
shares are available to buy i.e. how many people are
selling. If there are billions of shares being sold that day,
no problem, the fund will buy them. The chances of that
happening however, are slim to none. The chances are
that there might be some 200,000 – 1,000,000 bought or
sold on a daily basis. This is called Volume. Therefore, it
is likely to take days if not weeks for a fund of that size to
buy a position in a company.
So what? Well none of this would be a problem by itself,

but as soon as there are more buyers than sellers the
market makers push the prices up – meaning that if a
fund is looking to buy a large position today, it will

massively push the price up at which it can buy the
shares. So unless they are willing to pay more money for
their shares, they have to try and get in only when there
are enough people selling at the price they want to get
in. This might take a few weeks. And there is no
guarantee that this is going to be possible – the price
might never come back down again, forcing them to buy
at a higher price.
We don’t have any of these worries. Our $2,000 or

$20,000 or even $200,000 isn’t going to be a problem at
all. There will always be enough sellers in the market for
us to buy what we are after, ensuring that we always get
the price we want and not a penny more! And this
happens in seconds, not days or weeks.
Reason Three - Funds HAVE to invest even when it is

best to stay in cash. We can stay in cash.
As an Investment Fund, our professional is mandated to

invest when he receives our money, no matter what is
happening in the market. Can you imagine the uproar if
he decided not to invest our money, stay in cash and to
his horror the market would go up? We think we are
invested with him. He however stayed in cash and missed

out on profits. We would be up in arms
as soon as we found out.
Worst still, he would still be buying if we sent him our

money when stocks are actually going down. If we
questioned him he would point to the sign on the door:
‘Investment Fund’. “That's what we do. Invest your
money for you. You send it, we invest it”.
Which leads us to reason Number 4.
Reason Four - Traditional funds can’t make money

when markets go down. We can sell short
We have just learned that our professional can't stay in

cash. So what do they do when markets are going down?
They buy.
Obviously, they are hoping to cherry pick those

companies whose shares price is going to buck the trend
and go up instead. Easier said than done. For a start,
market sentiment makes up approximately 65% of the
movement. If the market starts moving down, people
start to panic. Panic leads to selling. Selling leads to more

panic.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just sell short? This is
where we make money when markets go down by selling
short at a high price and buying back at a lower price?
They would if they could but the majority of funds can

only buy. That means they can only make money when a
market goes up. Not when it goes sideways. And they will
actually lose you money when it goes down. Put another
way, you have 1 in 3 chances of making money.
How do you like the odds of being able to make money
in only 1 out of 3 scenarios (that's less than 50-50
chance)? Now imagine putting the odds in your favour
and being able to make money in ALL market directions.
How do you like THOSE odds? We can do that. They can't.
Reason Five - Funds are forced to make short term

decisions to the detriment of longer-term gains. We can
view things more long term and therefore benefit more.
Funds are forced to make short term decisions to the

detriment of longer-term gains. We can view things more
long term and therefore benefit more.
Fund managers are ranked according to their

performance against each other. If a fund falls down the
ranking, investors start to pull their money out. So, a
fund’s job is essentially to do 2 things.
1. Take investors’ money in – as much as possible to earn

annual management fees
2. Keep investors’ money in – as long as possible to earn
annual management fees
In order to do that, they will sacrifice really big long-term

gains in order to make short term gains and keep their
ranking. There have been stories of incredibly well-
respected investors, including Warren Buffett, who were
criticised about not riding the technology bubble up all
the way in the late 90s. They were vindicated and later
proved right when it crashed wiping out millions of
profits, but by that time most had been fired.
We on the other hand, can get into a position and even

if it is going the wrong way for a while, even months or
years, it is ok because we are not comparing ourselves
to anyone else. Jim Rogers, a maverick and contrarian
investor, who ran the Quantum Fund with George Soros,
will usually get in way too early but in the end, he is
proven right. They made their shareholders over 4,200%

in 10 years. Now that's what I am talking about!
Now if there were one or two reasons then they could be

ignored. But how can we ignore five solid gold reasons?
So take heart that you really do have a great chance of
making money and let’s get on with it.
3. If it’s so simple how come everyone

isn’t doing it?
The answer to this question is that people just don’t

know about it. They weren’t taught by their parents, by
school, by the Government. Did YOU learn how to trade
or invest? Let’s face it, the entire financial sector is
geared towards getting you to invest your hard-earned
money with them so they can earn their management
fees. They don’t want you to learn how to do it yourself.
That would mean their management fee is gone! In my
opinion they have done a tremendous job in keeping the
whole stock market covered in a veil of mystery. The
general public just doesn’t know how simple it is to
invest.
On a side note, you may think, as I do, that in a capitalist

society the government’s first priority for an education
system would be to turn out highly financially savvy and
motivated entrepreneurs. However, this appears not to
be the case. In fact, it seems the opposite. Our schools
teach nothing about starting a business, building wealth
or even basic financial management, they are all geared
toward getting you employed. If you had had an early
education on good money practices and wealth creation,
then you would most likely be in a better position than
you are today to make this journey.
4. Am I going to have enough time?
Some of our investing strategies take 20 minutes a month

or 20 minutes a week. We hope you have enough time
for that. If you want to take it more seriously then we
have the Buffalo strategy which takes just 20 minutes a
day. We find that even people who think they don’t have
20 minutes a day, when they start getting the results our
graduates are getting, suddenly do find the 20 minutes a
day.
In truth it isn’t even 20 minutes a day.
“Aha!” You say, “I knew it!”

It’s actually less than 20 minutes a day. Imagine you have

invested your money in 6 – 8 stocks. After that there’s no
more for you to do. What are you going to do – stare at
those stocks for 20 minutes a day? “Honey, dinner is
ready!” “I can’t, Marcus says I have to do 20 minutes a
day!” It just isn’t going to happen and there will be weeks
where there isn’t anything for you to do. So 20 minutes a
day, especially with a bit of practice, is more than
enough.
5. Do I have enough money to start?
You will be surprised to hear that it does not take much

to get started. In fact, we suggest that you can get started
with $2,000 in US or with a leveraged broker like
YourTradingBroker.com, even as little as £500 in UK. If
you can start with more, great. The more the better. But
if you don’t have more it is not a problem - the key is to
keep adding to it every month if you can. This is what
most people don’t truly understand. They think they do
but they actually don’t understand the power of
Compound Growth, which we discuss in detail in the next
chapter.
SUMMARY
In this chapter we discovered...
• What is the stock market
• The 20 Reasons why the stock market is a

great way to make money
• Why it really IS possible to make money

trading/investing
• Why it is possible for YOU to make money

trading/investing
• The 5 Reasons that you have more chance of

making money than the professionals
• Why everyone has the time to spend either 20

mins a month, week or day trading/investing
• You can start with just $2000 or even £500

C H APT ER T H R EE
THE POWER OF
COMPOUND GROWTH
LEARN HOW TO TURN £2K
INTO OVER £2 MILLION
“Someone is sitting in the shade today

because someone planted a tree a long
time ago” - Warren Buffett
Reaching your Critical Net Worth in

the shortest possible time
In Chapter One we discussed the importance of growing

your Net Worth to achieve your Critical Net Worth as
soon as possible. So how do you reach your CNW in the
shortest possible time? The answer is by learning to
make your money work hard for you, in other words, to
invest your money, get some gains and then to reinvest
those gains immediately so that your money is always
working harder each time. The result of re-investing your
profits like this is called ‘compounding’ your money. The
greatest financial minds over the centuries have
marvelled at the power of doing something so simple. It’s
been called, “The royal road to riches”, “The greatest
mathematical discovery in human history”, “The most
powerful force in the universe”, and most famously by
Einstein, “The Eighth Wonder of the World”.
The reason I personally love compounding so much is
because everyone can do it. You don’t have to be a genius
or a rocket scientist, you just have to resist the urge to
spend your profits and instead re-invest your profits, if
possible all of them, for maximum results. In fact, you can
argue that the vast majority of people, who didn’t steal,
marry into or inherit wealth did it through compounding.
Some discovered oil, or started huge property portfolios,

but it’s through the use of compounding that their
wealth grows from year-to-year, generation-to-
generation. And this is one topic that should not be
underestimated.
Compounding is the safe and sure road that luckily

anyone can do. The best analogy is that of a snowball
rolling downhill, the further it rolls the bigger it gets, and
that’s what happens to your money over time through
compounding.
If I said to you, “I’ll give you £1 million now or give you a

penny today and I’ll double the value every day for a
month.” Which would you take? It certainly looks like an
easy choice a cool million in your pocket today or 1p
today, 2p tomorrow, 4p the next day and so on for a
month. Easy choice, right? Well not so fast. Let’s do the
maths.
Here’s a chart that shows what happens with your penny

over just 28 days, or a lunar month.
Day No. No of Pennies Day No. No of Pennies
1 1 15 16384
2 2 16 32768
3 4 17 65536
4 8 18 131072
5 16 19 262144
6 32 20 524288
7 64 21 1048576
8 128 22 2097152
9 256 23 4194304
10 512 24 8388608
11 1024 25 16777216
12 2048 26 33554432
13 4096 27 67108864
14 8192 28 134217728
After just 28 days you have amassed the grand total of

134217728 pennies, or £1,342,177.28, that’s £1.34
million! Do you still want the £1 million? Remarkable isn’t
it? This is the power of compounding, and this is the way
you’re going to build your wealth over the next few years.
How many years? Let’s take a look. All of them, the rest
of your life, because if you are not still compounding the
day you drop off the perch, then you’re missing out.
Fun with numbers!
Right let’s have some fun with numbers. Why is it fun?

Because you’re going to see how numbers can make you
rich, and that’s always fun!
Compounding is all about the maths, but you don’t need

a maths degree to understand it, a five-year old can
master these numbers. Here’s a chart to show you what
happens if you start with £2,000 and compound it for 15
years. We are aiming at 3% a month on your initial
capital. You may think that’s very high, well it is if you
expect to get it from the banks, but later on in the book
we’ll show you how our students consistently achieve
this and much more.
Charts with so many numbers like these can be a little

off-putting, but please take a little time to understand
these numbers as they’ll reward you enormously in the
long term.
The first chart shows... If you start with £2,000 and get 3% a month
for 15 years you end up with £397,094 (Not too shabby!)
The second chart shows…If you start with a little bit more money
i.e. £3,000 and get the same % returns over the same amount of
time (3% a month for 15 years) you end up with a LOT more money
£595,641 (Amazing!). The more money you start with the better, as
you will reach your CNW faster!
The third chart shows…If you manage to save just £100 a month
and add that into your trading account, you end up with
£1,254,131. Saving £100 a month is not exactly difficult for the
average person, especially if you stop spending that £100
elsewhere. But to turn £100 into an extra £658,490 has got to be
worth it!
The fourth chart shows... If you now add an extra £50 on top of
that £100, so £150 in total can you see what happens after
15 years? You end up with £1,583,376 isn’t that incredible? I bet
you’re wondering what would happen if you really started
saving now.
But it doesn’t stop there; just imagine if you were able to improve
your performance over time? Is it realistic to say that you would
get better at something if you were to practise it for a while? The
answer is “yes”. So instead of making 3% a month let’s say you
started making 3.5% a month instead? Can you see what happens?
Now we are at £3,437,587.
If this is sinking in, and you fancy making about

£3.5million in the next 15 years, then the obvious
questions are...
• Can I get £3,000 together to start?
• Can I add an extra £50 - £150 every month?
• Can I re-invest the interest and leave it alone to
accumulate and not spend it?
• Can I get 3.5% interest a month on my
investment? (The answer to this is yes, if you let
us teach you how to do it for only 20 minutes a
day of your time.)
The charts above are just examples of some scenarios;

you may have 50 years to compound over or 5. Every
person’s situation is different; you may be able to add
£500 a month or nothing. Take the examples and work
out what you’re able to do. However small or large your
investment, compounding will grow it substantially!
Simply go to: -
investment-mastery.com/compounding and put in the
various numbers to see what is the fastest way for you to
get to your Critical Net Worth. After all, this is the goal –
to get to your CNW as soon as possible.
We have shown you how you can dramatically speed up

your journey towards your CNW, but you have to actually
DO IT. It’s not theoretical; if you don’t act then when you
check your bank account in 15 years the money is not
going to be there!
Some of you might be thinking that these results are not

possible due to tax. This depends on what country you
live in. For example, in UK we can use a spread betting
broker like YourTradingBroker.com and therefore
there is no capital gains tax to pay. In the Netherlands
and Belgium there is no capital gains tax to pay no
matter what broker you choose.
Slow and steady wins the race
Although compounding is quite a simple concept once

you understand it, not very many people know about it
or fully understand it. Do an experiment; ask a few of
your close friends if they know about it and ask them to
explain it to you if they say they do.
Here are some cardinal rules when using compounding...

• Start as early as you can – time is crucial when it

comes to compounding
• The calculations we showed you are just 15 years.
Imagine what happens in 25, 35, or 45 years!
• Always keep adding to the pot – every month if
possible
• Always re-invest the profits, don’t spend them
• Get as high an interest rate as possible
This is the slow, steady but sure way of making millions,

the quiet path to financial freedom.
SUMMARY
In this chapter we discovered
• The power of compounding
• Why everyone should use this simple means of

building wealth
• How you can start with £3,000 and end up with

£3.4 million in 15 years
• How to reach your Critical Net Worth in the

shortest possible time
• Slow and steady wins the race
• Start as early as you can – the longer you can

keep compounding the better
• Always keep adding to the pot
• Always re-invest the profits, don’t spend them

CHAPTER FOUR
WHERE YOU CAN

SAFELY INVEST YOUR
MONEY
What do I invest in?
Starting trading and investing can be a bit of a minefield

when you begin. First you need to decide whether to buy
either stocks/shares, commodities such as oil, gold or
silver or trade Forex etc. Once you have decided, you
need to know which strategy you want to use. There are
literally thousands of different strategies; then do you
use vehicles such as the underlying stock itself? Or its
options, futures etc? And what broker do you use? A
normal broker or a leveraged broker using CFDs or
spread betting (YourTradingBroker.com)? Next you need
to know which strategy to choose. On what time frame
are you going to use these strategies? One-minute
charts, or 5 minutes, 15 minutes, daily, weekly etc? And
then there are the hosts of indicators, and each has its
own settings – the combinations run into millions.
As you can see, as a beginner it can be a bit

overwhelming. So, at Investment Mastery we like to keep
things very simple. Let’s start with a few facts about the
stock market.
As we said before, I want you to imagine the stock market

being a big vault. What is in the vault? Money! And what
stops us getting into the vault with your fair share of the
money in it? Simply the right combination to get in.
Learn this combination and you can keep going back for
more, as often as you like. It all depends on how much
time you want to focus on it. If you spend more time on
it you can make more money.
An important fact about the stock market is that while it

tends to go up and down, up and down a lot, in the long
term, the trend is generally up. Take a look at the chart
below.
This is the Dow Jones, the most recognized index of USA.

It consists of 30 top American companies. Can you see
that the long-term direction is up?
But also, there are times when the direction is DOWN.

And there are times when the direction is sideways.
Here’s something that most people don’t know. There
are THREE ways of making money – UP, DOWN and
SIDEWAYS. Most people think that the idea of investing
is to make money when markets go up. That is certainly
one way for sure, but there are two others. And most
people either don’t know this or they know it but don’t
know how to take advantage of it.
If you only take advantage of 1 out of 3 market directions,

you are basically leaving 2/3rds of the money on the
table. Can you imagine that?
The good news is that when you learn how to take

advantage of all 3 market directions, then you are going
to have a lot more chances of making money than 99.9%
of people out there.
Let’s start with learning how to make money by investing

for the medium to long term, meaning months or even
years. This is done by buying low and selling high. So what
do we invest in? Let me ask you a question. Can a stock
go to zero? In other words, can the price fall to zero? The
answer is “Yes it can”. Now let me ask you another
question. Can an entire market go to zero? The answer is
no, because it would mean that all the stocks in that
market would all have to go to zero too. Buying an index
of the stock market can’t go to zero. What about an
entire sector, say the technology sector? Could that go to
zero? No. Could an industry within that sector, i.e. the
semiconductor industry go to zero? Unlikely. What
about gold to zero? Unlikely. What about oil? Not within
the foreseeable future.
These are all the kind of things we want to be investing

in. Why?
Because, when we are investing, we want to ensure that

we are putting our money into something that is not
going to go to zero.
We can purchase all the above through something called

an ETF. An ETF is an Exchange Traded Fund, which is
simply a basket of shares already made up for you. You
don’t have to buy into a managed fund and pay lots of
management fees, you just buy the ETF off the shelf,
already filled with companies.
INDICES
The picture below is the price chart of the FTSE 100 Index.
As the name suggests, it is an Index of the UK stock
market, called Financial Times Stock Exchange. 100
companies make up this index. Is it likely to go to zero?
No. That would mean that all 100 companies would have
gone to zero. Therefore, a good candidate for us to invest
in.
FTSE
Notice that the price goes up and down all the time –
each time it goes down it gives us new opportunities to
get in, and each time it goes up it gives us new
opportunities to get out.
DOW JONES
The American equivalent of FTSE is the Dow Jones

(above) which is made of 30 top US companies.
The one we prefer to trade is Standard and Poor’s 500

(SP500). This is made up of 500 companies and therefore
gives us a broader indication of what is happening in the
stock market. It is also more volatile and so it goes up and
down more, giving us more entry points when it comes
down and more exit points when it goes up.
S&P500
Another chart we like is the Nasdaq 100, which is

predominantly made up of technology stocks.
NASDAQ
ENTIRE SECTORS
Indices are great because they are made up of many

companies and therefore the chance of them falling to
zero are not great. But they don’t give us a lot of
volatility. Volatility is the amount the price moves. We
need it to go up and down as much as possible so we
can buy and sell at a profit as much as possible.
So where else can we look? How about entire

sectors? They are made up of many companies but are
likely to be more volatile depending on how the sector
is perceived at the time. Let’s take the example below:
Oil and Gas Sector

Notice that the fluctuation between lows and highs is

anywhere between 7-25%. This is the ideal.
Not all sectors move as much – take a look at the

Pharmaceutical sector below: it only really fluctuates 5-
10% in general, so this would not be suitable for us.
Pharmaceuticals Sector
So we have to choose the ones that do fluctuate the

most, while giving us a certain amount of stability at the
same time – normally the two are mutually exclusive. The
more volatile, the less stability. The more stability, the

less volatility.
So how can we get more volatility and still stay safe?
Remember stocks can go to zero.
How about entire industries? It is unlikely that gold,

silver, or platinum will go to zero.
Gold
Now take a look at silver – it is not uncommon for silver

to fall 20% or more. Whenever gold falls, silver falls more.
Whenever gold rises, silver rises more, as if it is on an
elastic band with gold. So there is much more volatility in
silver and still it is not likely to fall to zero.
Silver
As well as silver, there are other industries that can be

volatile, for example platinum …
Platinum
… and oil can also be volatile and not likely to fall to zero.
Oil
So what we are looking to do is to buy into something

that is solid. The more something is certain, the less
volatility there is. However, we have to be careful that
we are not just buying into something which isn’t going
to move. We need a certain amount of volatility to be
able to make money! The trick is to find something that
is safe but still gives us the movement we need. That is
why we invest in stocks.
STOCKS
But not any stocks. We are looking to buy safe stocks.

What do we mean by that? Stocks that are household
names that you and your friends use. For example, and
these are not recommendations, but questions: do you
and your friends use a Microsoft product and more
importantly, are you going to continue? Is Microsoft
likely to go bankrupt? What about Apple? Can you
imagine Disney going bankrupt in the next few years?
Unlikely. What about Intel? Unlikely. Cisco? Unlikely.
So there are a few stocks that we would consider for our
buy and hold strategies, but not stocks in general.
How to find good companies using

Fundamental Analysis
Most people are looking for WHICH company to invest in

i.e. a healthy company with good ‘fundamentals’.
Fundamental Analysis shows us the current health of the
company, and the rationale behind that is, if you find a
good company then the share price will go up
eventually. This is more of a long- term strategy – what
most people don’t realise is that you can find the best
company in the world, but that does not mean that the
share price will go up in the short term. What is equally
important is the short-term sentiment of the market –
so it might go down for weeks or even months before
going back up. That is why we use Technical Analysis,
i.e. WHEN to get into that healthy company. The key
is to find a good healthy company to buy using
fundamental analysis and then to time the entry as
best you can using technical analysis.
Let’s start with Fundamental Analysis – finding great

companies. There are well over 8,000 public companies
out there. The aim is to create a more manageable list
called a Watchlist of Companies, say whittling it down to

50 or less. These are the companies we will focus on.
What are the kinds of things that we might be looking at
when we’re looking at the health of a company? Below
are some ideas of where to start using Fundamental
Analysis. It will not surprise you that Earnings, which is
American for Profits, is used several times:
1. PEG Ratio
The PEG is the Price Earnings to Growth Ratio. The ratio
is made up of three parts. 1. P = Price 2. E = Earnings per
Share (These 2 together form the famous PE Ratio), and
3. G = Earnings Growth
Price / Earnings per Share
Earnings growth
Let’s say we have a P/E ratio of eight. As a shareholder

you want know how much Earnings (profit) you have for
one share i.e. I own one share, how much is the profit?
For example, let’s say the price of this particular stock at
the moment is $24 dollars and that year we made
Earnings per Share of 3 Dollars.
So, $24 / $3 means that we have a P/E ratio of 8 which

means that the person who’s going to buy the stock right
now is paying $8 for every $1 (that’s the same as $24 for
every $3) that the company earns. So you are paying for
future earnings. The higher the PE Ratio the more you
are paying now for future earnings.
The G stands for Earnings per Share Growth i.e. the
amount the Earnings per Share are projected to grow in
% terms.
Confused? Don’t worry. All you need to know is the PEG
ratio has to be lower than 1.5 or even lower than 1 if
you’re really strict. If the PEG ratio is at 1 it is considered
fairly valued i.e. the valuation is fair. Below 1 and you are
looking at a stock that is undervalued.
2. Earnings Growth
In PEG we have Earnings Growth (G) projections. But it is
so important that it deserves a section by itself. We need
to be asking ourselves, “Are the profits growing and are
they going to be more next year than this year?” We want
to see year on year growth in earnings for the next
five years. If the earnings are going up, it is likely that
investors will buy the stock in the future and if they are
going down, they will most likely start selling. So how do

we know what future earnings will be? Good question.
Here we have to rely on expert Analysts that estimate
this for us.
We’re looking for five-year earnings Growth on the

Earnings per Share (EPS) between 15% and 30%.
Anything higher than that is not sustainable over time.
3. Debt
We also want to ensure that a company has debt. This
might seem strange but if it doesn’t have debt it means
it is not expanding fast enough i.e. it is not using the
resources it has at hand to maximise everything it can.
On the other hand, we don’t want it to have too much
debt in case it can’t be paid off and it might go bust.
We are looking at the debt ratio that indicates the
percentage of the company’s assets, what they own, that
are provided for by its debt.
Debt Ratio = Total Debt / Total Assets

x 100 (to get it in %)
A debt ratio of greater than 100% indicates that a

company has more debt than assets. Meanwhile, a debt
ratio of less than 100% indicates that a company has
more assets than debt.
We’re looking for a debt ratio that is below 35%. If a

company’s debt levels are more than that, it often proves
extremely difficult for the management to be able to
borrow more at a certain price in order to expand the
company even more, and without expansion into new
markets, which is normally done by debt, corporate
growth will eventually slow down and then the stock
price will be affected.
Companies with lower debt often have better prospects
for future expansion because they can still raise their
debt, but remember we still want companies to have a
certain level of debt.
The next one is less important but it’s interesting to
know.
4. Institutional Ownership
What percentage of the company is owned by the big
boys, the institutions, the pension funds, the mutual
funds, the unit trusts? Because on the one hand you
don’t want there to be too many of them but on the
other hand, you don’t want to be investing in a company

that no one knows about and no one’s checked out, that
you never ever heard of before.
You want to make sure that you are actually investing

in a company where people who have more market
experience than us have done the research and are
investing. Does this make sense? A bit of institutional
ownership is a good thing.
So, we don’t want too high, we don’t want too low, we
want in the middle, so between 25% – 55%
Final one.
5. Price
I want the price to be above $5, preferably $10. It has to
be above ten dollars because I want to make sure it’s not
what’s called Small Cap stock i.e. small capitalisation. I
want there to be enough liquidity i.e. buying and selling
of the stock. Also, did you know that no stock below $5 is
going to be looked up by the majority of institutions? And
I want them to cover my stocks. I want them to write
about my stocks. Why do I want the institution to write,
to publish, to talk, and to tweet? It’s marketing and a lot
more potential buyers are going to know about them and

are going to invest as well. It has to be over $10.
Would you like to know how to find these companies?

We can filter them on: FINVIZ.com
This is a FREE stock screener where we screen through

6720 stocks that meet the criteria we are looking for
above, to find the best stocks we possibly can.
Remember we are not looking to play the same game as

everyone else – to find a company that will go up 1000%
and make us millionaires overnight. While it sounds
good, it isn’t that easy to do. So instead we are going to

find good companies and then use the strategies we will
be discussing in the next few chapters.
6,720+ stocks are too much for us to look at (although I

did have a trader friend of mine who used to spend 5
hours every week staring at a screen doing just that).
Nowadays stock screeners such as FINVIZ.com
automatically filter down to meet our criteria, which
leaves us with a much more manageable number to look
at every month, say 25. We are in essence, filtering down
using our criteria to get a smaller number every time.
This is how it works.
While putting in price above $10 hardly changes anything

at all, putting in EPS growth of over 35% in the next 5
years means we have only 836 left! It’s a good start but
still too many charts for us to look at. Put in the debt
lower than 30% and it comes down to 370. Still too large.
Adding institutional ownership narrows it down to 321
but this is still too long for us to manage. Time to get out
the big guns. The PEG under 1 gets us down to 52! Looks
like only 52 stocks out of a universe of 7000+ are
undervalued at the moment. Not surprising considering

we have been in a bull market since 2009.
Remember we are looking to get the list down to a more

manageable number so the smaller the number the
better - Increasing EPS growth to over 20% gets us down
to 29. Much more manageable.
This is what the final screen looks like:
If you wanted to get that number down even more, you

just need to add more criteria. As you can see there’s
plenty to choose from. For example, you might want to
find companies giving you an annual dividend for cash-
flow. Or change some of the values in the criteria we
have already chosen. The more strict the values are, the
less stocks will appear, the more lax the values, the more
stocks will appear.
Let’s take a look at some of the stocks. I like to start with

the ones that have the lowest PEG Ratio, i.e. the ones
that are undervalued the most. Please note that this
does not mean it is the right time to buy the stock, in
fact it rarely is – it just means it is undervalued. It might
continue to stay undervalued for a while – no-one knows
how long – and I don’t want to get into a long term buy-
and-hold position when all I am looking for is a short-
term trade to gain anywhere between 5-10% within a
few weeks, and if necessary months.
By pressing on the ‘Valuations’ tab, I get a list of various

criteria. I want to start with the lowest PEG Ratios. By
pressing on the top, I can sort it that way, with the lowest
PEG ratio starting at the top.
By placing the cursor on the stock symbol on the left, you

can quickly look at each stock chart to see if there are any
chart patterns you like. I actually like the first one with
the lowest PEG (see picture above) because it is heading
up but with up and down swings. This gives us a good
entry point. The price is too high right now – it seems to
be in the middle of its range and we just need it to come
down again and then we can consider an entry point.
If we want to know the highest Earnings per Share

growth (EPS) in the next 5 years, you can do that too.
Notice that DKL, which was ranked number 1 on PEG, is

ranked number 4 on EPS next 5 years.
SUMMARY
• What we can invest in medium to long term

o Indices, sectors and industries using ETFs and
Individual Stocks
• Individual stocks: How to find good stocks

using fundamental analysis
o PEG Ratio
o Earnings Growth,
o Debt,
o Institutional Ownership and
o Price
CHAPTER FIVE
SIMPLE INVESTMENT
STRATEGIES IN 10
MINUTES PER MONTH
OR WEEK
PCA, VCA & BUY SELL ZONES
We are about to start describing the investing and

trading strategies we use at Investment Mastery. Before
we do that, we need to distinguish between the two:
Investing – Time IN the market: Building up a position

over time so that when the big move comes you are in.
The downside is that you could be in the investment for
a long time and not going to make as much money as
trading.
Trading – TimING the market: Trying to get in at the

lowest possible point to make the most profit on that
trade. The downside is that you need to have a system to
get in when the stock happens to get to your price - If you
didn’t get in when the big move comes, you miss the big
move.
INVESTMENT STRATEGY 1 :
POUND COST AVERAGING ( PCA)
Stats: Semi-automated. Aiming at up to 5%
a year on average
The Pound Cost Averaging Strategy takes a small

amount of time to set up and then is completely
automated. Each strategy that follows will take a little
more time, but will result in a significantly better return
on investment.
No stocks mentioned are recommended. For simplicity,

we also assume that you will invest £100 per month.
This is an example only. You of course, should
consider investing more, as there are fixed charges to
pay each time you trade. However, you must only
invest with money you are comfortable with – but
please get started.
The simplest investment strategy in the world has got to

be ‘Pound Cost Averaging’. This is how many
people invest indirectly in the stock market via their
pensions, for example.
How does it work?
Imagine this scenario: Every month, normally at the same

day of the month, money from your monthly income is
transferred to your pension. The pension manager then
invests some of that money by buying stocks. They are
not timing the market i.e. trying to get in at a low point
or price; they are just buying at the current market price
irrespective of whether it has risen or fallen. They don’t
have to think about it. Once a month they just buy.
It is so simple, you might be thinking that you could do

the same yourself, buying shares every month, saving the
charges incurred by your fund manager. You would be
right!
With this strategy, you are buying into the stock at an

average cost over time, not at a given high or low, so no
thinking is necessary. Is it really necessary to pay a ‘fund
manager’ to do that for you?
This strategy takes the absolute least amount of effort.

You can set up a direct debit and shares are purchased
every month at market rate. With the right broker, this
strategy can be set up in advance and fully automated.
Every month the broker receives your money – as

explained above, £100 per month. As soon as they
receive it, they invest it. In January the broker invests
your £100, in February £100, in March £100 and so on
every month, irrespective of the price of the share.
The price fluctuates, going up and down. Every single

month they will be buying stocks at whatever the price
happens to be on that date. The broker is investing the
same £100 each month, but the number of shares that
they can buy will differ each time.
Sometimes the broker will buy when the price happens

to be high, sometimes when it is low and sometimes
around the middle – wherever the price happens to be.
Therefore, over time, you will buy stocks at an average
price, hence the term, Pound Cost Average.
Pound Cost Averaging is better than investing all your

money at once! Why? Take a look at the chart below. This
is a typical stock, moving up and down in price.
Note that in September; the price was high at around the

$45.86 mark.
What if you had some money during those months and

without looking at the chart you invested a chunk of your
money?
Sadly, y ou would have bought when the stock price was

high – clearly not a great idea; we really don’t want to
do that. Instead of buying once and risk buying at the
wrong time, we invest the same amount of money every
month.
As you can see in the chart, some months you would have
bought low, some months high and some months in the
middle.
By buying monthly, you get an average of all these prices.

Since you are investing the same amount of money, i.e.
£100 per month, you get more shares when the price is
low and fewer shares when the price is high.
To calculate the average price you paid, add up the

money you invested over the year: 12 x £100, and divide
by the total number of shares that you received. That is
your average price.
Without a doubt, having an average price, i.e.

somewhere in the middle, reduces your risk of buying at
the wrong time in the market, i.e. the high of $45.86 or
even higher.
Pound Cost Averaging is widely used because it takes no

thought at all and can be fully automated.
This is its greatest strength because it means that most
people can do it. Yet it is also its greatest weakness,
because it is so random. It depends on when the money

hits the brokers' account.
For example, if you decide that you are going to invest

£100 at the end of each month, the broker invests the
money as soon as they get it, towards the end of the
month. The broker is happy to invest even, if it is right at
the top because ‘the money came in’.
If, however, you sent the money in the middle of the

month, then the broker would have invested in the
middle of the month. Can you see that you would have
bought the stocks at different prices, depending on when
you sent the money over?
PCA is fully automated and simple to do, but as you see,

it is too random. At around 5% a year, it also brings in too
little return. But we needed it to be able to teach you the
strategy we really want you to start with - Value Cost
Averaging (VCA). VCA builds on PCA and you can
dramatically improve the returns on your money in just
10 minutes per month. With VCA we are looking for
between 5-15% a year on average.
INVESTMENT STRATEGY 2:
VALUE COST AVERAGING ( VCA)
Stats: 10 minutes a month. Aiming at up to
15% a year on average
Over time VCA will make you a lot more money than PCA.
Using the same concept of buying into an investment
such as indices, gold, silver, oil or some good stocks every
month, it attempts to lower the average cost over time
by purchasing a little more in the months when the price
is down and less when the monthly price is up.
So how does it work exactly?
Let us take the example above.
Remember that with PCA, we bought £100 worth of

shares every month, no matter what the price? With
VCA, we do it differently. With VCA we are going to spend
more when the price is lower and less when the price is
higher.
Let’s start again with £100 a month*. We are looking to

buy less in the month where the price has gone up and
more if the price has gone down. For example, we are
going to buy £75 worth of shares in the months that are
‘up’, and in the months it is lower we put in £125.
Over the two months you have still put in £200 but you
have invested more in the months when the price is
lower.
What does this mean for the end of the year? i.e. what
do you think happens to your average price compared to
PCA? Can you guess?
Your average price comes down substantially because

you are putting more money in when the price is at a
better value, hence the name VALUE cost averaging.
This strategy takes just 10 minutes a month! It massively

outperforms PCA over time because with VCA you
have brought down your average price. With VCA
we are aiming to outperform the market and aiming for
anything up to 15% a year. And you can wrap it
up in your Individual Savings Account (ISA) so it is
100% tax free. You can also do this within your Self
Invested Personal Pension (SIPP), so it is tax free for a
number of years. Not paying tax on your profits
MASSIVELY boosts your profits over time.
Further improvements on VCA

There are several ways we can further improve on
the strategy. For example, we could invest more if the
price continues to drop, and continually less if the price
rises (see below).
If the price drops twice in successive months, then in the

first month it drops you could invest £125*, and in month
2 you could invest £150* etc. Equally, as you can see in
the example above, if it rose, you can invest less, say
£75* and if it rises again in the following month, you
can invest less again, say £50*. We have put an * next to
these figures to make it clear that they are just examples.
Clearly with brokerage costs it wouldn’t make sense to
go in with such low figures, so you need to work out what
makes sense for you.
The idea is to invest more when it is down and less when

it is up, so that your AVERAGE price is at a lower VALUE,
hence, Value Cost Averaging. This way, when the price
rises, you will expect a handsome profit, much more than
with PCA.
Remember that this strategy cannot be fully automated

like PCA because we have to actively look to see if the
price has risen or has fallen. However, it takes just 10
minutes a month and over time VCA makes you better
returns for just a tiny bit more effort. I hope you can see
this and start implementing it as soon as possible.
At this stage we are still not timing the market. However,

there are more advanced forms of VCA, using simple
indicators to enter in order to time the market. While
even more effective, this extra level of complexity can
turn the complete novice off, so we prefer to stick with
the simpler explanations above.
Most investors are happy to stop here, but if you want

more % returns, then there are more levels.
INVESTMENT STRATEGY 3 :
BUY– SELL ZONE
Stats: 10 minutes a week. Aiming at up to
25% a year on average
With the Pound Cost Average strategy and the Value Cost
Average strategy we have not been timing the market,
but ensuring that we have time IN the market. This
ensures that we never miss any of the big moves that can
make such a difference to your portfolios.
The next strategy, called the ‘Buy-Sell Zone’, is an

attempt to start timing the market without the stress of
actually day trading. You can look at it once a week or
once a month – you decide. Once the stock price drops
into a Buy Zone, it is time to start buying, and then when
it goes up to a higher zone, it is time to start selling. The
Zones take all the guesswork out of timing the market. It
is brilliant in its simplicity, let me explain …
If we use a charting program like Big Charts or Free

Stock Charts and set the time span to one year, you can
see in the following chart, the highs and the lows of
that stock price.
You simply draw some lines at the top and bottom of the
price range. The top line is called the resistance line or
ceiling and the lower line is called the support line or
floor.
You also add another line in the middle of these two

lines. You now have an Upper Zone (top 50%) and a
Lower Zone (bottom 50%).
Two stock charting applications that we use can be found

online for free at bigcharts.marketwatch.com/ and
freestockcharts.com/ . All decent stock chart tools have
the facility to draw lines over the top of the chart.
If we just draw another line through the top half again

(top 25%) and another through the bottom half (lower
25%), we have a diagram with 4 zones in, as you can see
below.
Zone 4 - Sell
Zone 3 - Sell
Zone 2 - Buy
Zone 1 - Buy
Now let’s think about what we are doing for a moment.

With Price Cost Averaging (PCA) and even Value Cost
Averaging (VCA), we were quite happy to put money into
every one of those zones, even in the top zones. The
reason was because we were not trying to time the
market in any way, recognising that timing the market is
easier said than done.
However, some of you might be asking yourselves, “Why

would you want to buy when the price is in the top half
(Zones 3 and 4), especially when the stock is in the top
quarter?”
The answer is - you wouldn’t!
This is where the Buy – Sell Zone concept comes in.
I want to buy the stock when the price is in the lower half,
say Zone 2 and buy even more when it is in Zone 1.
As you can see from the diagram above, you have the
lower half, which are your Buying Zones, and you have
the top half, which are your Selling Zones.
You want to buy in Zone 1 and when the price goes up to
Zone 4 you want to sell this stock. In Zone 2 you should
think about buying and in Zone 3 you should think about
selling.
You can get quite creative here. For example, you buy
£100 worth of stock when it is in Zone 2 and £200 when
it is in Zone 1. You then sell 50% of the stock when it exits
Zone 3 and enters into Zone 4 and the rest when it
reaches the top of Zone 4.
Zone 4 – Sell – 100%
Zone 2 – Buy – 50%
Zone 1 – Buy – 100%
What does this mean?
It means that you are buying near the bottom and more
at the very bottom, then selling some near the top and
the rest at the very top.
In other words, you are starting to time the market, but

without the stress of timing it to the second (that we
leave for the next strategy.)
This strategy is semi-automatic. You could look at the

stock on a monthly basis and make a decision just once a
month, acting on whatever the price might be at that
time. Doing that might mean you miss out on some great
moves, so you could monitor it on a weekly basis, and
make a decision more frequently so you are really
starting to trade. We look at this in the next chapters.
SUMMARY
• The difference between TIME IN the market

and TIMING the market
• Investment strategy – Price Cost Average
• Investment strategy – Value Cost Average and

Advanced VCA
• Investment strategy – Buy-Sell Zones

CHAPTER SIX
TRADING STRATEGIES
BUY-SELL ZONES
ADVANCED AND
BUFFALO
Buy–Sell Zones Advanced
When we were investing we did not try to time the

market. Rather we looked every month or even every
week to see where the price happened to be and made a
decision based on that.
With the Buy Sell Zone Advanced, we are now not waiting
for the right time to get in. Rather we are waiting for the
right price to get in. This is the difference between
Trading and Investing. Investing does not rely on price.
Trading definitely does.
Let’s take another look at the chart below. From February

2019 to February 2020, the price moved from a Buy Zone
to a Sell Zone several times but just for a few days at a
time.
Zone 2 – Buy – 50%
Zone 1 – Buy – 100%
If you are looking at the charts just once a month to make

a decision on your next move (investing), you would have
missed lots of trading opportunities to get in and out
(trading). So as traders we are going to get in when the
price hits the level we are interested in. For example, we
could enter the stock every time it hits either the lower
level Buy Lines rather than in the middle somewhere. You
can do this either by placing an order in advance and you
would buy as soon as the price level is hit or you can set
an alert with your broker who will send you an email
when that price level is hit.
Either way as you can see you would enter the trade
fewer times than with the normal Buy Sell Zones strategy
Zone but you would be timing the market much better
and therefore get in at much better prices.
Equally you can exit every time it hits the lines in the Sell
Zone. Either by placing an order to sell in advance with
your broker or you can set an alert with your broker who
automatically sends you an email once the price level is
hit.
Buffalo Strategy
In our last strategy, Buy – Sell Zone, we bought and sold

stocks as the price moved from one Zone to the next.
In other words, we started to time the market.
Now let us look at timing the market fully. We do this

through the Buffalo Strategy, our name for sideways
moving markets. With the Buffalos, we only buy if the
price comes close to the bottom of Zone 1, and we sell
when the price nears the top of our Zone 4.
Sell
Zone 4
Zone 3
Zone 2
Buy Zone 1
Where does the term ‘Buffalo’ actually come from? You

probably know that a rising market is called a Bull
market, and a falling market is called a Bear market.
However, there is a 3rd market movement, the sideways
market, which up until a few years ago did not have a
name.
I published an article in a national newspaper to

announce the arrival of the sideways moving ‘Buffalo’
market. The idea was to come up with a big animal
starting with the letter B. Bulls, Bears and Buffalo. I was
thinking of a sideways range and the open ranges in
America and the Buffalo that roam there.
It can be used in all three-time frames
• Short term – daily / weekly trades

• Medium term – weekly / monthly trades
• Long term – monthly / yearly trades
My 7 rules for the Buffalo strategy are:
1. Three bounces from either a support line, or a

resistance line to enter (2 to get out)
2. The Risk:Reward ratio must be at least 1:3 i.e. For
every £10 you risk you are potentially gaining £30
3. The percentage price difference between the support
and resistance lines must be at least 10% (For a
medium time frame 20%; for a long time frame 30%)
4. Always invest with the trend
5. The Trading Volume must be more than 200,000 a
day
6. The Price must be above $10
7. Avoid if there is an earnings announcement imminent
Ok that might have been a bit of jargon but we give more

detail at our 1 Day Stock Market events (see back of book
for more details).
So where do you find buffalo stocks? First you have to do

some fundamental analysis in the way we have described
it, and then you need to find the ones that meet all the
criteria above. Or alternatively we do it all for you on our
website: investment-mastery.com
Let’s take a look at Intel for example. Here we see a

monthly view i.e. each bar represents one month:
Typically for a profitable technology company that

soared in the 90s, it has just been going sideways since
the price came back down in 2002.
Most people would look at this chart and not know what
to do. 13 years on and the price is basically the same.
How can you make money when the price doesn’t go up?
But this is where we make most of our trades.
Take a closer look at Intel on a weekly setting:
Because if you look closely at the weekly price

movement, you will see that it does go up and down
many times, giving us various entry points throughout
the year. The money is made in the middle! We wait for
it to come down to a recent low and start accumulating,
knowing that the overall trend is up.
Another example is GNK, below. This is showing a classic

Buffalo formation, just moving sideways, just waiting for
us to trade it time and time again as it touches the line
below.
Finding these stocks and tracking them can be a lot of

work on your own. My graduates work together in the
forum, continually posting stocks which are ready to
trade now!
How to make money when

markets go down
Remember we are not just buying and selling these

stocks – we are also shorting them i.e. Making money
when markets go down. What exactly is Selling Short?
How can you make money when markets go down? We
don’t have to stand by watching our money dwindle as
markets go down; we can jump in and make money as
they do so.
Everyone knows that the idea of making money is to buy

near the bottom and sell near the top. But what is so
great about the Buffalo strategy is that we can actually
go one step further. We also do something called ‘sell
short’ near the top. This is a way of actually making
money when markets go down. We then sell short at the
top and buy back at the bottom, and the middle is the
profit.
In other words, while most people are losing money

when markets go down, we are actually making money.
Most people don’t understand how to make money
when markets go down, which is a shame because they
are missing out on almost double the trading
opportunities and chances of cashing in.
This has to be part of your trading arsenal for sure –

selling short almost gives you 100% more chance of
making money. And also, stocks tend to fall faster than
they go up. So you can make money faster. Why?
Because people tend to panic as markets go down so
everyone starts to exit their trades. So the stock goes
down further, making even more people panic and so it
continues. That is why they say that bulls walk up the
stairs (slowly) and bears jump out of the window (fast).
Large institutions are aware of this so they drive down
prices even more, to shake everyone out before they get
in.
Now some people get confused by this concept but in

reality, if you look at the graph below we are still buying
low and selling high and when you do that you make a
profit. How else can you make a profit other than buying
low and selling high? The only difference is the order in
which we do this. Normally we buy first and then we sell.
When we make money going down we sell first, and as it
goes down we then buy. Can you see that in this way we
are still buying low and selling high? Only we are doing
the selling first.
Now the immediate reaction for most people is “But
Marcus, how can you sell something you don’t own?”
Good question. The answer is, you can’t. But as soon as
you press that button called ‘Sell Short’ the broker
automatically lends you the stock which you then
automatically sell to the market. Then at some stage you
have to buy it back to give back to the broker who lent it
to you.
Let’s take an example. Take a look at the graph above. If

you thought that YEXT was high at $17.98 because it had
fallen at that level several times, then you might be
tempted to press the ‘Sell Short’ button. As soon as it falls
you are in profit. At some stage you want to realise your
profits, if possible as close to $12.86 as possible. That
would be a great trade. That’s a 17.98 – 12.86 /17.98 *
100 = 28.47% profit.
Please notice that when you were shorting YEXT and the
price would have gone UP, you would have lost money.
In the same way that when you buy a stock and it goes
DOWN, you also lose money. That is why when we are
trading we always use a stop loss, to ensure small losses
and large gains.
Let’s take another example, a made-up example. You are

currently in the pen industry where you buy and sell
pens, and have realised that the price of a pen does not
tend to go over £1. The current price of pens is sitting at
exactly £1 and you decide that you want to sell pens,
however you have none in stock. You go to someone who
will lend you pens (broker) and ask for 1000 pens, which
he agrees to give you. You then go on to sell those pens
at £1 making £1000 in total, and sure enough the market
price starts to fall. The market price reaches £0.50 and
you are in profit, and you decide that you want to cash in
your profits, in order to do so we need to return the pens
to our lender (broker) so that we can cash in on the
difference in price per pen. We then buy 1000 pens at
£0.50, which cost us £500, we then return the pens to the
lender (broker) and we are left with £500 profit.
In the markets this whole transaction is done with a few

clicks of a few buttons and the transaction time is almost
instant.
Let’s take another example. Let’s say that I had just

bought a brand-new Mercedes E-250 sport coupe.
Imagine I left the car with a friend for a year while taking
a 1-year vacation around the world. Imagine that this
friend sold the car and made £47,000 on the spot. One
year later I come back and the first thing I do is to call my
friend to get my car back. What does he have to do? He
has to buy one in the market place. The price has
probably fallen over that time so now they are worth only
£37,000. He buys an identical model, puts my number

plate back on and gives me the car back. The difference
is he has pocketed £10,000 and I am none the wiser.
Still not comfortable with the idea? Ok, do you use a

mobile phone? If you do, then how does it work? How
does your voice travel into the phone then get beamed
halfway across the world so that you can talk to a friend?
Don’t know how it works exactly? No. But you still use it
don’t you? Yes. Why? Because it works.
There are only 4 buttons:
1. Buy
2. Sell
3. Sell Short
4. Buy back
Just practice doing it and make money as markets go

down and you will soon figure it out …
SUMMARY
• Trading Strategy: Buy Sell Zones Advanced
• Trading Strategy: Buffalo Strategy

o Useful in short, medium and long term
markets
• How to make money when markets go down

CHAPTER SEVEN
HOW TO MAKE
MONEY WITH
VERTICALLY RISING
(AND FALLING)
BUFFALO STOCKS
Some Buffalos don’t just go sideways horizontally. Some

actually crawl up (or down), and turn into vertically rising
(or falling) Buffalo stocks, that look like a big Caterpillar.
Trying to time vertically rising (or falling) stocks is more

complicated than sideways buffalo. This is because with
the sideways buffalo the lines stay the same and once
you know your entry and exit points, they tend to stay
the same. With the vertical buffalos the challenge is that
the line moves every single day.
Let’s take a look at the chart below. This company’s price

chart goes up and comes down but the general direction
is up. Notice how the highs get higher and the lows get
higher. This means it is trending up. We can draw a
vertical line at the bottom of the lowest points and we
notice that the price seems to obey that line, as if by
magic.
Is this a mere coincidence?

If it had just touched it twice then this might indeed have

been coincidence. But when it comes down again and
again to the line, and this is seen in stocks all over the
world, then this cannot be mere coincidence.
In our experience, the same people all around the world

are looking at this same stock. They have all drawn the
same lines. And when the price comes down to the line,
what do you think they are looking to do? That’s right –
they are looking to buy. It becomes an almost self-
fulfilling prophecy, and this keeps happening until one
day, it stops happening, either because the stock breaks
up to the upside or down to the downside.
What is great about vertically rising stocks is that the

moves can happen very fast. Why? Because it has
momentum to the upside. With higher lows and higher
highs, you are already increasing your chances of making
money because the trend is up. If you buy you are going
with the trend. This is an important lesson: Always trade
with the trend. That is why if we see a trend that is down,
we don’t buy into it because it might continue down. And
we don’t know for how long, so we like to ensure that we
go with the trend.
How can we tell if a stock is trending up (or down)? The

most commonly used way of ascertaining this is to find a
minimum of 3 levels of support. If we look at the price
chart above, you will see that there are four times that
price has come down to the level of the line. So there are
more than the 3 we are looking for. This means the trend
is most definitely up.
So now, we are looking to enter with the trend.
So how can we make money out of this? We wait for the

3rd bounce and try to get in as it starts to rise, using
something called a STOP order, or we now wait for the
4th time it reaches that point and then get in at that

price.
Very important is that we place our stop loss just below

the low of the bar that touches the line. Equally
important is that we allow the stock to go up as long as
possible. Since the highs are getting higher and the lows
are getting higher, this stock could go up for
the foreseeable future, maybe even years.
There is always the temptation to come out too early but

resist that temptation if possible. You can always take out
some of the profits when it reaches a high, for example
50% but allow the rest to continue. You could raise your
stop loss to just underneath the stock when it is near a
high – so if it decides to come back down you take the
profit automatically, but if it wants to continue up then
that is fine too.
Sometimes we see the same formation as stocks go

down. If we look at the price movement below, we can
see a vertically falling Buffalo stock, much like a
caterpillar again.
Can you count the number of bounces it had coming

down on the vertical line?
If you counted 3 then that is correct. And again, we can

either try to get in on the 3rd bounce using a STOP order
or wait until it comes back again to the line and then sell
short.
And remember if you go with the trend, you can make

money fast. In fact, not only are the lows lower and the
highs lower, but generally you can make money faster
when markets go down. Just look to see what happened
in March. Can you see how the price jumped down from
when it touched the line? This is called ‘gapping’ which
means that a large player sold overnight and when the
market opened the price was substantially lower.
Rest assured you can make money whether markets go

up or go down, you just need to know which button to
press. And some risk management.
Are we going to make losses? Of course, we will make

losses every so often, however due to the fact we use
tight stop losses and let our profits run we make sure that
our gains are much larger than our losses, thus more than
covering any trades that may have gone into a loss.
The Trend is Your Friend – how to put the odds in your

favour by using market direction to your advantage.
What we want to do now, is to explore the other market

movements. For example, a stock could trend up with
higher highs and higher lows. For it to be classed as
‘trending’ it means that it continues up over a period of
time. Or a stock could trend down with lower highs and
lower lows. This means that it continues down over a
period of time. Now let’s take each in turn.
If a stock is trending up, like the chart below, what can

we do?
If you said we could buy at the bottom of the support line

and sell at the top, then you would be right. The question
is though, if the trend is up, where would we try to make
money going down by selling short?
What would you say? Near the top?
The answer is you wouldn’t.
When the trend is up, we do not sell short. We only go

with the trend, never against the trend. Fighting the
trend is like standing on a railway line with your hands up
in defiance, telling the oncoming train to stop and

thinking you can stop it with your sheer will power. The
train is much bigger and faster than you and it will squash
you like a bug. It is best to quickly jump to the side, and
instead of going against the trend of the train, to jump on
the train in the way it is moving.
In the same way you have more chances of making

money when a stock is moving up to go with the upward
trend and buy into it. The highs are higher and the lows
are higher, so we have to assume that once a stock is
trending, it is more likely to continue in that direction
than to turn around and move in the other direction.
Let’s take a look at the chart below. It is clearly trending

down. Where would you sell short?
If you said you would sell short near the top of the
support line and buy back near the bottom, then that
would be correct.
But where would you try to buy in the hope of making

money as it goes up? Where would your entry point be?
Would you say near the bottom?
Go on; take a guess before reading on …
The answer is, you wouldn’t. Remember we only go with

the trend, we don’t go against the trend. Another
analogy is a bus. If you were going East, you wouldn’t
jump on the bus going West in the hope that it will
eventually turn around and head back East? You would
cross the road and wait for the bus going East, as it will
likely get you there faster.
In the same way, you have more chances of making

money when a stock is moving down to go with the
downward trend and sell into it. The lows are lower and
the highs are lower, so when a stock is trending it is more
likely to continue in that direction than to turn around
and move in the other direction.
Here’s what else is interesting: when you see an upward

moving stock, it is likely to bounce off a support line
and move up faster than a sideways moving stock for
example. This is because everyone else who is looking to
trade that stock sees the same thing as you. And when
the stock is ready, they are waiting to jump in, driving the
price back up.
Another reason to always go with the trend - if the stock

is going up, we buy and never ever Sell Short.
But when we see a stock trending lower, we can make

money even faster – the reason is that when stocks start
to go down, people tend to panic and start selling. This
in turn leads to other people selling and the prices start
moving even faster.
Therefore, we always go with the trend and if the stock

goes down, we sell short and never ever buy.
Summary:
When the stock is going:
1. Sideways, we can buy at the bottom and sell at
the top; We can sell short at the top and buy at
the bottom because there is no clear trend
either up or down
2. Up, we can buy at the bottom and sell at the top
but we cannot sell short at the top and buy back
at the bottom because that is going against the
trend.
3. Down, we can sell short at the top and buy back
at the bottom but we cannot buy at the bottom
in the hope it will go back up because that is
going against the trend.
Remember that the Trend is your Friend and you will

dramatically increase the chances of making money.
In fact, here at Investment Mastery we say, “The Trend is
Your Friend until the Bend at the End.”
How to time the market with the ‘Bend

at the End’
So how DO we time the market to know when a trend

has finished? The answer is this, “The trend is your friend
until the bend at the end!”
Let us take a look at the example below. FDX was
trending downwards from September all the way to July.
We feel that it has gone up a lot and will turn at some
point but we cannot just simply sell short as we don’t
know when it is going to turn. Suddenly it starts to
change direction. The high was around $158.54, an ideal
place to sell short, but we only know that with hindsight.
We never know when the trend is going to end until it
already has. The high of $175.50 is therefore our first
bounce but it is not until the 2nd bounce in late February
at just above $165.77, bringing with it a lower low and
lower high, that we think that trend might indeed have
turned.
But we need to be sure. We cannot start selling short

until we get confirmation.
Bounce 1 Bounce 3
Bounce 2
Entry Point
The line connecting the first two bounces extends and is

hit in July 2020. This is a chance for us to get in with a
‘stop’ order, which gets us in ONLY if the stock turns and
goes back down.
It is almost as if everyone was waiting for the same entry

point before entering. As soon as the 3rd bounce occurs,
there is a sudden drop, leaving a gap. A gap is where the
price closes at one point and opens the next day at a
point so far away from the close price that a gap occurs
on the chart. 10% and more is achieved in a day and the
stock continues down for several months for
approximately 33% gain.
What does this tell us? We don’t need to know exactly

where the top is to be able to make money. This is just as
well, because no-one knows exactly where the top is
going to be until after it has occurred.
Let us take a look at another example below. SNV clearly

has an upwards trend from January. The highs are getting
lower and the lows are getting lower. That means that
we cannot buy the stock, as we have no idea when this
downward trend is going to stop. As the saying goes “The
trend is your friend”. But where do you get in? The
answer is “the bend at the end”.
As you can see, in 2019, SNV suddenly changed direction

and started to go up.
Bounce 2
Bounce 3 Entry Point

Bounce 1
The lowest point is below $31.25 early January, the

ideal time to get in. As much as I would like to say that
we could have timed the market perfectly, this is much
easier said than done. The truth is we don’t know that
the turn has occurred, until it has already occurred.
Remember we are looking at 3 bounces to be sure that
a new trend is in progress. The bounce at the beginning
of October allows us to draw the trend line linking to
the low of January. The next bounce in November then
gives us a perfect entry point as this is the third bounce
on our upwards trending support level, we can then get
in using a ‘Stop’ order i.e. when it bounces back up.
In short: The trend is your friend … until the bend at

the end!
If you see a stock heading in one direction, do not assume

that it is going to turn and try to time the market and get
in. You have no idea when or how long the trend is going
to continue. Therefore, wait until we get confirmation
that the trend is over. It is not enough that the stock
starts to turn and go in the opposite direction but rather
that it has established a new trend in the opposite
direction.
SUMMARY
• How to make money with vertically rising

Buffalo stocks
• How to make money with vertically falling

Buffalo stocks
• How to time the market with a ‘Bend at the

End’
CHAPTER EIGHT
MINIMISE YOUR RISK;

MAXIMISE YOUR GAINS
Minimise your risk through 1% stop

loss
Risk management is one of the most important aspects

of trading. It is also the one that gets ignored the most.
Think about it – the only reason people lose money is
because they risk too much of it in the first place. That is
why one of the greatest investors in the world, Warren
Buffet, has these 2 rules:
Warren Buffet’s Rules
1. Don’t lose money
2. Refer to Rule Number 1
The idea is that if you don’t lose too much money, you
still have money left to invest. You can only make a profit
if you have money to invest. If on the other hand you lose
too much money then you have no more to invest.
Here is something that most people don’t know – the

more you lose the more difficult it is to come back and
win. In fact, if you lose more than 50% of your capital, it
gets very difficult indeed. Take a look at the numbers
below:
Recovery Recovery
Loss
Needed Loss
5.0% 5.3% 1.05
10.0% 11.1% 1.11
20.0% 25.0% 1.25
30.0% 42.9% 1.43
40.0% 66.7% 1.67
50.0% 100.0% 2.00
60.0% 150.0% 2.50
70.0% 233.3% 3.33
80.0% 400.0% 5.00
90.0% 900.0% 10.00
95.0% 1900.0% 20.00
If you lose small amounts i.e. 1-10% then you can recover
easily, but if you lose 20%, you need 25% to make up the
loss. If you suffer a loss of 50% you will need 100% to
get back to where you were. Then it gets steadily more
difficult to make it back. At 60% loss you need 150%, 70
loss you need 233%, 80% loss 400% and 90% you will
need to make a 900% gain i.e. make 9 times your money.
It is virtually impossible to get back from these kinds of
losses.
Can you see now why we are so adamant that you learn
good Risk Management? By the way, if the words, ‘Risk
Management’ sound too technical, then please note that
all we are saying is “Don’t lose too much on any one
trade”.
So how much is ‘too much’ on any one trade? It varies

depending on which trader you talk to or what strategy
you are trading but most serious traders will never risk
much more than 1% on any one trade. Most people
believe that if you were to risk 1% on any one trade then
you would lose your entire account after 100 trades. On
the face of it, this seems to make sense. You start off with
100% and lose 1%, meaning you have 99% left. Then 98%,
97% etc.
But this is not the case. When Einstein talked about

compounding being the 8th wonder of the world, he
was not just talking about compounding profits, we
also compound our losses. Only this time it is Reverse
Compounding. If you are risking 1% of your current
capital, then your current capital is falling with every loss.
Meaning that you are risking LESS after every loss you
make. An example: let us assume that you have £10,000
in your account and you make a 1% or £100 loss, this

means you will have £9,900 pounds left in your account.
If you were then to make another loss and lose another
1% you would lose 1% of the new, lower current capital,
namely £9,900 so that your second loss would NOT be
£100 like the first loss, it would only be £99. In other
words, you are losing LESS with every loss you make.
Most people don’t realise that after 100 losses you would
still have 36.6% of your account left (broker fees
excluded). In fact, you would need to have 462 losing
trades in a row before you wiped out your account. It is
more likely that you win the lottery than this happening
i.e. it is virtually impossible, especially with our
strategies.
This is not to say that you wouldn’t be risking more than

1% at any given time. You could have several trades on
at the same time, each one risking 1%. For example, if
you had 5 trades on at the same time, how much of your
overall capital would you be risking? The answer is 1% x
5 trades = 5% overall. But never more than 1% on any one
trade.
So how do we calculate the risk? Not in the way most

people do it. Most people will put $5,000 on each trade
and believe they are risking the same on each trade. I
used to do this for years. This is not correct. To find out
how much money we should be spending on each trade,
we need to use the Risk Management Formula.
Risk Management Formula:

Account Risk / Trade Risk
= Risk Size
In other words:
How much of the account you are risking divided by the
difference between the entry price and exit price of your
stop loss. This will give you the number of shares you
should buy.
Let’s say you have an account size of £20,000 and we are

prepared to risk only 1% on any one trade. Let’s say we
want to trade “XYZ” which is a US stock. If our account is
not in US dollars and we are trading US stocks, we must
convert the amount in the account into US dollars in
order for us to work out the correct account risk. We do
not have to physically go and change our account; all we

have to do is a simple calculation.
All we need to do now is convert our £20,000 into US

Dollars. The GBPUSD exchange rate is at 1.50, which in
turn means that our £20,000 equates to $30,000. Now
let us take the following example:
Entry price = $61.20

Stop Loss = $59.10
Now we have everything we need. Following the Risk

Management Formula:
Account Risk / Trade Risk = Risk Size

(the number of shares you should buy)
Account Risk = $30,000 x 1% = $300
This is the maximum amount we are willing to lose. Not a

penny more or less.
Trade Risk = entry price – stop loss

= $61.20 - $59.10 = $2.10
Therefore: Account Risk = $300
Trade Risk $2.10
= A trade size of 142 stocks
The Risk Management Formula dictates how much

capital we are going to invest.
Capital we need to invest
In this example it has worked out that we are buying 142

stocks. Which means that if we buy 142 stocks at $61.20
(entry price) we need a total of:
142 x 61.20 = $8,690.4
Notice this is not a random number which we have

decided to allocate e.g. $5,000; but rather based on the
price of the stock and the amount we are willing to risk
e.g. 1%. In other words, the formula tells us how much
money to invest.
Use this formula as it will ensure you never lose too

much on any one trade.
Some people say “but if we are only risking 1% can we

ever make a lot of money?” Absolutely, yes. A stock can
go up 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% of your entire capital or more.
But we only ever risk 1% of your entire capital per trade.
That is the Golden Rule of trading.
How to get more bang for your buck
The problem with using traditional brokers is that your

money is quickly tied up in trades. Imagine you are fully
invested and suddenly you see the trade of the century.
You could use something called margin. Margin is money
that the broker lends you. Traditionally, when you place
£10,000 into an account, you can trade with £20,000. It
is like having an extra £10,000 overdraft facility which is
there for you to use if you need to. Theoretically you can
place double the amounts of trades. If it goes well, you
would make double the amount of money. If you lose,
you lose double the amount of money. The problem is
the amount of trades – even in the example above using
margin. The most trades you can be in is double the
amount of trades, not more.
What if there was a way for us to be able to get into 10

– 20 times more trades than usual, while still risking the
same amount of money on each trade? This is a great way
to get more “bang for our buck”. The way we do it is to
leverage our trading. By leveraging our account, it means
that less capital is needed to place the trade, therefore
allowing us to get into more trades.
We do this in two ways. The first way, for people living in

the UK, is a leveraged product called spread betting. This
is where we will be betting on the direction we think the
price will go, but we do not own the stock itself. The main
advantage of spreadbetting is that it is tax free!
YourTradingBroker.com is an example of this. The second

way, if you do not live in the UK, is a leveraged product
called, CFDs. The term ‘CFD’ stands for Contracts for
Difference. CFDs are another way of making money from
share price movements, again without owning the share
itself. We simply own a contract which we buy at one price
and sell at another, making (or paying out) the difference
- hence the name, Contracts For Difference. In essence
it is the same as spread betting – you are placing money
based on the direction you think the price will go – but
with CFDs we also have to pay capital gains tax.
Spread betting is a great way to trade but is not available

for people outside the UK, so you have to trade CFDs.
YourTradingBroker.com is a spread betting AND CFD
broker.
Many people believe that leveraging our account

automatically leads to more risk. This is a misconception.
We are only ever going to be risking 1% of our capital per
trade, no matter what we do. The risk remains the same
i.e. 1% of your account, however the amount we need
for the trade decreases, due to leverage used with the
broker.
Spread Betting
(UK only. If you live outside of UK please turn to CFD section
below)
In spread betting we bet a certain amount of money

for each point the share price moves up or down. For
example, if we are buying a stock at 21.20 at £1 per point,
then every time it goes up by a point we make £1. How
much is a point? If the stock goes up to 21.40 we make
£20 because the stock has moved up 20 points, 20 X £1 =
£20. If the price were to drop to 20.90 we would lose £30
because the stock has dropped 30 points, 30 X £1 = £30.
Let us now use the same example as before where we

had an account of £20,000, and risking only 1% on any
one trade. Let’s say we want to trade “XYZ” which is a US
stock. We do not need to convert into US Dollars as we
are simply going to be betting on the direction. Using the
same example as before:
Entry Price = $61.20

Stop loss = $59.10

Management Formula from before:

(pound per point)
Account Risk = £20,000 x 1% = £200.

This is the maximum amount we are willing to lose.

= $61.20 - $59.10 = 210 points
Therefore: Account Risk = £200

Trade Risk 210
= A trade size of 0.95 (£ per point)
You may have realised that all the steps are very similar
to traditional trading, so what is the difference? The
difference is an important one – it is the capital we need
to invest when spread betting.
Capital we need to invest: Traditional vs

Leveraged broker
In this example we worked out that in traditional trading

we would be looking at buying 142 stocks.
This means that if we buy 142 stocks at $61.20 (entry
price) we need a total of:
142 x 61.20 = $8,690.4

Account which in £ at an exchange rate of 1.5
would be £5,793.60
In spread betting we typically only need to put down 5%

of the amount you would need in a non-leveraged
account.
In this example, 5% x the traditional amount required to
invest =
0.05 x £5,793.6= £289.68

That is a huge difference. Can you now see the advantage

of using a leveraged broker?
This means that instead of tying up £5,793 on one trade,

you are only tying up £289 on any one trade. That’s a
difference of £5,503! What this means is that you have
an additional £5,503 in your account to place on other
trades. Let us assume that each trade only required £289.
That would mean you could get into 69 trades with a
£20,000 account, whereas with a traditional trading
broker you could only get into 3 trades. That’s a
difference of 66 trades.
Therefore, if you are using a spread betting broker as

opposed to a traditional one we have a lot more capital
in our account to get into many more trades, which in
turn allows us to have the potential to make much more
money!
CFDs (outside UK only)

(If you live in the UK please turn to spread betting section
above)
In CFDs we are going to be going into the trade with a

certain amount of contracts, which allows us to make
money from the price movement.
Let us now use the same example as before where we
have an account of £20,000 and risking only 1% on any
one trade.
Because we are trading CFDs, our account will most likely

not be in £, so we are going to use US dollars. We want
to keep the same value as before so that we can compare
our results, so let’s say that our account has $30,000
(used in our previous example).
Let’s say we want to trade “XYZ” which is a US stock.

Using the same example as before:
Entry price = $61.20

Stop Loss = $59.10

Management Formula from before:

(the number of shares you should buy)
Account Risk = $30,000 x 1% = $300

This is the maximum amount we are willing to lose.

= $61.20 - $59.10 = $2.10
Account Risk = $300

Trade Risk $2.10
= A trade size of 142 stocks
You may have realised that all the steps are very similar
to traditional trading, so what is the difference? The
difference is an important one – it is the capital we need
to invest when using CFDs.
Capital we need to invest: Traditional vs

Leveraged broker
In this example we worked out that in traditional trading

we would be looking at buying 142 stocks.
This means that if we buy 142 stocks at $61.20 (entry

price) we need a total of:
142 x 61.20 = $8,690.4
In CFDs we typically only need to put down 5% of the

amount we would need in a non-leveraged account.
In this example 5% x traditional amount required to

invest =
0.05 x $8,690.40= $434.52
That is a huge difference. Can you now see the advantage

of using a leveraged broker?
This means that instead of tying up $8,690 on one trade,

you are only tying up $434 on any one trade. That’s a
difference of $8,255! What this means is that you have
an additional $8,255 in your account to place on other
trades. Let us assume that each trade only required $434.
That would mean you could get into 69 trades with a
£20,000 account, whereas with a traditional trading
broker you could only get into 3 trades. That’s a
difference of 66 trades.
Therefore, if you are using a CFDs broker as opposed to a

traditional one we have a lot more capital in our account
to get into many more trades, which in turn allows us to
have the potential to make much more money!
Additional point to consider when using

CFDs
As mentioned in the UK you are not likely to be using

CFDs, so this does not apply to you.
For those that are using CFDs if our account is not in US

dollars and we are trading US stocks, we must convert
the capital in the account into US dollars in order for us
to work out the correct account risk. We do not have to
physically go and change our account; all we have to do
is a simple calculation. Let’s take an example:
We have 20,000 EUR and we want to trade a US stock.

We simply do a simple search on the internet and find
the exchange rate for the EUR to USD. If we search “EUR
to USD” in Google we will get the currency exchange rate
we are looking for. So let us assume that the exchange
rate is 1.34. All we need to do is:
20,000 EUR X 1.34 (exchange rate)

= $26,800
Therefore, our account risk calculation we will use is

$26,000 instead of 20,000 EUR as the account size.
Maximise your gains through ratios
Now that we know that we always minimise our losses,

we also have to maximize our gains. At our 1-day
masterclass, I ask people if they would be willing to risk
1% to gain 1%. Some people put their hands up. Let me
prove to you right now that this is NOT a good idea. Let
us say that when we lose we lose the same amount as
what we make when we win i.e. 1:1 Risk:Reward Ratio.
£1,000 every time we win

-£1,000 every time we lose
We are risking the same amount as we could be making.

Can you see why we call it a Risk:Reward Ratio of 1:1?
I then ask someone in the audience to take out a coin and
flip it 10 times. Heads are wins; Tails are losses. This is
supposed to represent a normal strategy that has a 50%

hit rate i.e. wins 50% of the time and loses 50% of the
time. Normally, we get the following result:
I I I I I = 5 Heads / Wins
I I I I I = 5 Tails / Losses
You can try it out for yourself but the longer you continue
to throw the coin the more likely that you will end up
with the same number of Heads as Tails.
Now can you see the problem? If you win £1,000 every
time you win and you lose -£1,000 every time you lose,
that means -£5,000 + £5,000, meaning you end up with
£0 and have to pay the broker costs every time you buy
and every time you sell. A clear loss.
Of course, you can always hunt out strategies that

perform better than 50%. But what most people don’t
realize is that the key to trading success is not to rely
on a strategy working well, but to change other things
to ensure that even a normal strategy can make you
money.
At the moment the risk reward ratio stands at 1:1. -

£1,000 if I lose and £1,000 if I win. But if we changed the
Risk:Reward ratio to 3:1, then everything changes. Let’s

assume we still have a 50-50 chance of winning but now:
£3,000 if I win
-£1,000 if I lose.
Now can you see that based on a strategy that wins half
the time and loses half the time, then out of 10 trades
I would make £15,000 and lose -£5,000 = £10,000 gain.
Not bad.
How do I do this: By following the 2 Golden Rules of

Trading. They are:
A. Let your profits run

B. Cut your losses short
By ensuring we have a stop loss where we only risk 1%

but allowing our winners to run to 3% or more (the more
the better), even if we had 50% wins and 50% losses, we
would still make money.
But there’s more.

What if the strategy didn’t perform 50-50? What if we

lost more times than we won? What if we had the
following scenario?
IIIIII 6 losses and

IIII 4 gains?
That would make:
-£6,000 and £12,000 = £6,000 gain
Even worse, what if we had a strategy that was not

performing well at all and we had the following
scenario?
IIIIIII 7 losses and

III 3 gains
Remarkably, this would still give us:
-£7,000 and £9,000 = £2,000
In other words, you are able to LOSE twice the amount

of times than you win and you would still make money
over time. Can you see now why Ratios or to be

exact, the Risk:Reward Ratio of at least 1:3, is one of
the biggest secrets to successful trading?
Amazingly in most of the courses I have been on, we

were not told about this.
SUMMARY
• Risk management is one the of the most

important aspects of trading
• Every single successful trader focuses on not

losing money; all novice traders focus on making
money
• The number one way of not losing money is to

always have a stop loss in place when trading
• The most we risk is 1% on any one trade
• To get more ‘Bang for our Buck’ we use a

leveraged broker like YourTradingBroker.com,
but please do your own research
• The Risk:Reward Ratio is the other most

important aspect of trading – in fact it is one of
the greatest secrets to successful trading
CHAPTER NINE
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO
PROFITING FROM
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Introduction
At the end of 2016 I read that some cryptocurrencies had

gone up by 5000% in just 12 months. I decided to do
some research, fast. This is what I found: $100 worth of
Bitcoins bought in 2010 would be worth well over $19
million today. How could I have missed out on those
returns? It was time to get in.
A few weeks of research later and I had bought 15

different cryptocurrencies using speculation money.
Most of the coins quickly went into profit, some
substantially. I decided I needed to take this more
seriously and really do some research. If not me then
who? If not now then when? You have to be in the game
to win it!
I paid several thousand dollars for the best crypto

subscription service I could find, and started buying more
and more cryptos based on their recommendations. I got
obsessed - I was even listening to it while going running.
At the time of writing I now own more than 36
different cryptos and over 50+ positions, have banked
some profits and am still up over 70% on my

entire investments. Not a bad start.
What are cryptocurrencies and where did it all start?
A decentralised system for sending money

to other people
Most payment systems run on a centralised network. The

problem with this is that you have to incur unnecessary
and expensive transaction fees. Usually, this is done by a
central server that keeps track of your balances i.e. your
credit card and/or the banks. It can also take several days
for one bank to talk to another bank and so sending
money becomes both expensive and takes too long.
A programmer calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto
successfully found a way to build a decentralized digital
cash system, thus avoiding the need for a centralised
system.
A decentralized system means the network is powered
by its users without having any third party, central
authority or middleman controlling it. Neither the central
bank nor the government has power over this system.
What are Cryptocurrencies?
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that can be used

to digitally transfer money to another person safely,
without having to use intermediaries or trusted third
parties, like a bank or visa, e.g. toll-takers, to verify that
you have sent the money and the money is now no longer
yours.
You might want to read that sentence again, slowly. In

addition, it does it much faster at a fraction of the cost
because it does away with unnecessary and expensive
transaction fees.
Why 'Crypto'?
The way digital currencies provide safety is two-fold. The
first is that it uses encryption technology (hence the
name Cryptocurrency).
What is the Blockchain?

The second way is to have a public ledger, where all the
transactions are kept. Thousands of computers around
the world are linked together to display this ledger. They
refresh and update every few minutes. This network of
computers all linked together in this way is called

the blockchain. You can trust it because it means that
each transaction has been verified again and again by
all the computers (the blockchain). With thousands of
computers linked up all over the world saying the same
thing, the ledger’s integrity is upheld. Each
cryptocurrency can have its own blockchain, although
some are shared.
How does this work?

Imagine I send you 10 dollars and you send the 10 dollars
to someone else. Somehow, someone has to keep track
of these transactions, to avoid forgeries or anyone
claiming they haven’t received the money. In the past,
Central Banks or banks have kept details of the
transaction on something called a ledger. This is based on
a centralised system.
With Bitcoin, currently the main digital currency, the

whole system was turned on its head. Instead of a
centralised system controlling the ledger, now thousands
of computers, all around the world, each keep a copy of
this ledger. Every single transaction is kept there, from
the beginning to present day. This is a decentralised
system, called the ‘blockchain computer’.
In other words, millions of small transactions i.e. me

sending you some money in another country, are
documented on the blockchain, locking them in for good,
so that they can’t be changed afterwards. The
information is trapped as irrefutable evidence and the
transaction can’t be undone. That's the whole point of
the decentralised system - the computers allow it to
remain decentralised and in the hands of many as
opposed to the hands of a few who are trying to control
the many.
What are Miners?

There are two ways of getting Bitcoin. You can either buy
one at the current price (today’s price is $4,200 for one
Bitcoin) or you can ‘mine’ it. The analogy is like mining for
gold. However, with digital currencies it is slightly
different, as you don’t have to go down a mine to do so.
With cryptocurrencies, you have to do it through
something called ‘Proof of Work’. ‘Proof of Work’ refers
to the fact that if you want a bitcoin, you have to literally
prove that you have done work and in return you get paid
in Bitcoin tokens.
In cryptocurrencies this is done by creating a scenario

where if you want to get paid in Bitcoins, you have to do
something which is not easy to do i.e. you have to
commit your computers to solving puzzles or
mathematical functions. If the computer solves the
puzzle then it proves that you have dedicated power,
time, effort, heat and computation to solve the problem.
The more you do this the more of a ‘vote’ you are
allowed to have. This vote is embodied in a Bitcoin
token. You receive a token of Bitcoin (a fraction of a
Bitcoin) in return for mining it.
Only miners are able to confirm a transaction. This is their

role in the cryptocurrency network. They record
transactions, verify them and disperse the transactional
information in the network.
For every completed transaction monitored and

facilitated by the miners, they are rewarded with a
token of cryptocurrency, for instance with Bitcoins.
What this does is introduce scarcity into the system.

Scarcity is important because the only way anything has
any value is because it is scarce. If gold, like pebbles, were
to be found everywhere, it wouldn’t have any value. But

Bitcoins are not easy to mine – it takes
computational power and time to do it, AND there are a
maximum of 21 million that can ever be mined. This
creates instant scarcity
What are the benefits and what

problem does it solve?
1. No Third-Party Involvement
With cryptos I can send Bitcoins directly to the other
person from my computer to theirs online within 10
minutes. There is no spread, no Foreign Exchange (Forex)
charge, intermediaries etc. And the whole thing might
cost me $10 maximum.
Now imagine this in EVERY part of society – from legal

contracts between two companies to sending money
across the world; from keeping money in escrow when
buying a house to online payments. Basically, anywhere
where there is currently a ’middle man’ who is either:
a. Slowing it down or
b. Making it more expensive.
2. Lower risk than traditional currencies

When using your credit card, you are giving the end-
receiver access to your full-credit line. No matter how
small the amount of the transaction is, the fact that you
are giving someone your card to gain access to your
account is already a form of ‘breach’. Most of this
‘breach’ is considered secure nowadays using differing
safety measures like ‘PIN enabled’ or other methods.
Then, the store initiates payment by ‘pulling’ the
designated amount from your account using the
information provided within your card.
Cryptocurrency doesn’t work that way. Instead of a

‘pulling’ mechanism, it ‘pushes’ the amount that is
needed to be paid or received to other cryptocurrency
holders without any further information needed.
Payments are possible without your personal
information being tied to you or the transaction. Your
account can be backed up and encrypted to ensure the
safety of your money.
3. Protection from fraud

We often hear of cases where one’s payment card is
being used by other users but not the owner. When
contacting his card’s service issuer, it is found that the

card has made certain transactions without his consent.
This is what we call a fraud case.
Most of the time these fraud cases get away with the
crime because it is not easy to trace the fraud back to the
perpetrator. What’s more, it is even difficult to get the
attention of law enforcement to launch an investigation
with only a single instance of crime the perpetrator
commits.
However, cryptocurrency is not viable to be used for

fraud. Due to the fact that your personal information is
kept hidden from unnecessary prying eyes, this protects
you against identity theft.
It is very hard to cheat using these cryptocurrencies due

to its decentralized system and the existing blockchain
system. It cannot be manipulated by anyone or any
organization thanks to it being cryptographically secure.
All the computers have a copy of all the transactions and
the computers are continuously talking to each other.
This is the most secure way of doing it as no-one can hack
in and make changes.
4. Universality
Over the course of payment history, nations worldwide
had their differing methods of payments. We had
bartering traders or money-goods exchange systems. It
wasn't until traders visited other countries that they
found out how to trade items with one another.
Fact is, not all countries have similar financial processes.

Your card or currency may not be accepted by other
countries and that is a major setback for some people.
For example, most online banking, payment or cash
systems require additional processing fees for their
service even if that account is yours.
However, Cryptocurrencies are not bound by any of

those exchange rates, transaction charges, the interest
rates or any other fees applied to any countries. They can
be used at any time, at any international standard,
without experiencing any problems.
It also saves a lot of your time and money by reducing

additional spending on transfer fees between multiple
countries. This is because cryptocurrency operates on an
international platform which in turn makes transactions
easier than your average bank – to – bank transfer.
Why is it important for YOU?
1. Crypto Trading and Investing

Compared to other financial currencies, Bitcoin has very
little barrier to entry. If you already own Bitcoin,
no verification is required and you can start trading
almost instantly.
Moreover, Bitcoin is not fiat currency. This simply

means the price is not related to the economy or
policies of any single country.
And unlike stock markets, there are no official

Bitcoin exchanges. Instead, hundreds of Bitcoin
exchanges operate 24/7 around the world. Because of
no official exchanges, this results in no official Bitcoin
price where the currency is known for its rapid and
frequent price movements.
2. Personal Spending
There are millions of items now being sold for
Bitcoins and this number is only increasing. You can use
Bitcoin to purchase almost anything! From buying cars
(Tesla) to travelling the world (Cheapair). From buying a

Microsoft product to paying estate agents.
3. HUGE potential
We could well be in the midst of the next ‘Gold Rush’. If
that is the case, do you really want to miss out?
For me personally I wouldn't want to be the one who said
"I knew it was going to be big, but I was too lazy to do
anything about it and yet again I missed out while
everyone else made a fortune" AND "What if everything
I have learned so far has led me up until this point". I even
had the thought, “What if I become the Warren Buffett
of cryptocurrencies? Someone has to - why not me?" LOL
4. Don't need a lot of money

You don’t need a lot of money to make really sizeable
profits, even a few hundred could turn into tens of
thousands.
I personally bought $850 worth of Antshares (now called
NEO) and turned that into over $90,000 in 9 months.
Where else can you get 14,000% return in that time?
5. Volatility
You might have thought that Forex was volatile. You
haven't seen anything yet. There are days when the
portfolio is down by -15% and the next up by 15%
Individual coins can fluctuate by 50% in one week. One
of my coins went up over 100% in just one day. In stocks
this kind of volatility would take an entire year!
6. We are just at the start

The majority of people haven't heard of it yet, meaning
that prices will go up as it becomes mainstream.
What are the main cryptos and what

do they do?
Below are the largest coins at time of writing in terms of

their market capitalisation (price in dollars x number of
shares in the market). They are in no particular order:
a. Bitcoin
This is the first ever cryptocurrency invented and remains
by far the most sought-after cryptocurrency to date.
Bitcoin is known as the digital gold standard in the

cryptocurrency network. As explained, Bitcoin is the
pioneer of blockchain technology that made digital
money possible.
It is the first ever decentralized peer-to-peer network
powered by its users without any central authority or
middleman which means, no unnecessary costs are
included in the digital money transaction.
One major advantage that it has over other

cryptocurrencies is that Bitcoins are impossible to
counterfeit or inflate. The reason being there are only
21 million Bitcoins created for mining, no more no
less. Therefore, it is predicted by 2140, all Bitcoins will
already be mined.
b. Bitcoin Cash
In August 2017 a group of miners split off from Bitcoin to
create Bitcoin Cash, in the way Ethereum Classic was
created by a group splitting off from Ethereum in July
2015.
This is what is called, a ‘hard fork’. A group of miners
‘forked’ from the main Bitcoin blockchain by switching to
a new version of software with greater transaction

capacity.
This fork did not affect bitcoin balances, but millions of
bitcoin users were also given bitcoin cash tokens as well.
c. Ethereum
Ethereum solves the problems of legal contracts online,
eliminating middlemen taking from transactions.
Like bitcoin, Ethereum is a part of a blockchain network.
The main difference between the two currencies is that
Bitcoin blockchain focuses on tracking ownership of the
digital currency while Ethereum blockchain focuses on
running the programming code or network
Instead of having to build an entirely original blockchain
for each new application, Ethereum enables the
development of thousands of different applications in a
single platform. In the Ethereum blockchain, miners work
to earn ether. Ether is a crypto token that helps run the
network.
Another use of the Ethereum blockchain is its ability to

decentralize any services that are centralized. For
instance, Ethereum is able to decentralize services like
loans provided by banks, online transactions using PayPal

as well as voting systems and much more.
Ethereum can also be used to build a Decentralized
Autonomous Organization (DAO). A DAO is a fully
autonomous organization without a leader. DAOs are run
by programming codes on a collection of smart contracts
written in the Ethereum blockchain. DAO is designed to
replace the structure of a traditional organization and
like Bitcoin, eliminating the need for people and a
centralized control.
d. Ethereum Classic
A few years back someone hacked into an Ethereum-
based application and stole millions. There was an
internal argument about whether this event should be
allowed to happen or to go back in time and make good
the money so no-one loses out. The purists that argued
that there is no going back in blockchain technology
broke away to form the new Ethereum Classic.
It is essentially the same as Ethereum, so it is unclear why
we need two of the same. However, lately it is looking to
distinguish itself from Ethereum.
e. Ripple
In cases where you have sent money overseas, around
the globe and so on, you were delivered a SWIFT code
which is an entity with a monopoly on border transfers –
in 200 countries, with more than 11,000 financial
institutions forming its branches.
However, Ripple, while working together with financial

services, banks and institutions, wants to take down
SWIFT and disrupt its functionality.
Unlike the other cryptocurrencies, Ripple operates on an

open-source and a peer-to-peer decentralized platform
which allows a transfer of money in any form, both fiat
and cryptocurrency.
f. Monero
The technology solves the problem of privacy. Monero's
main goal was to create an algorithm to add the privacy
features that are missing in Bitcoin. Monero invented a
system to conceal the identity of its senders and
recipients.
g. Dash
Dash – Digital Cash is one of the most
promising alternative coins to Bitcoin.
Dash advocates itself as peer-to-peer decentralized

electronic cash. It intends to be as liquid as real cash
which we use in our respective countries.
Like BTC, Dash is open-source and has its own

blockchain, wallet infrastructure, and community. But
unlike BTC, its transaction fee is negligible.
Dash is designed to have a total supply of 18

million coins.
h. Litecoin
When the currency was first launched, it aspired to be
the ‘silver’ to Bitcoin’s ‘gold’.
One of the biggest advantages that Litecoin possesses is
it can handle a higher volume of transactions thanks
to its algorithm. The faster block time also prevents
double spending attacks.
While Litecoin failed to secure and maintain its second

place after Bitcoin, it is still actively mined and traded and
is bought by investors as a backup in case Bitcoin fails.
How are the cryptocurrencies’ prices

determined?
The value of cryptocurrencies is dependent on the

market, where the prices of various cryptocurrencies
vary a lot and is one of the most fluctuating and volatile
markets to date.
The price of cryptocurrencies like any other product is

dependent on demand and supply. If more people
demand a particular currency and it is short in supply,
then the value increases. More units are mined by miners
to balance the flow. However, most currencies limit the
supply of their tokens.
Scarcity is an important factor when compared to fiat

currencies. Fiat currencies can be printed every day,
making our money worth less every year. Digital
currencies however have limited supply. For instance,
the total amount of bitcoin issued is only 21 million.
Therefore, Bitcoin’s supply will decrease in time and will

reach its final number by 2140. It also explains why
bitcoin’s value is higher compared to other
cryptocurrencies. Dash has the same idea, limiting itself
to 18.9 million – this might explain why its price is also
doing well.
How do you make money with

cryptocurrencies?
There are many ways to make money with

cryptocurrencies. The three most popular ones are:
1. You can mine them

This is where you use your computer(s) to mine for
Bitcoin i.e. use the computational power of your
computer(s) to help verify certain transactions on the
blockchain and be rewarded with Bitcoin or other coins.
2. You can lend them

This is where traders who need margin and leverage
borrow your coins to trade with. They have to give them
back to you with a % commission.
3. You can buy them

This is the topic of the following chapters
When choosing cryptocurrencies, do your research.
Don't get caught up in the hype. When you are
researching, remember to ask:
1. "What problem is it solving?”
If it doesn’t solve a problem then why would anyone use

it or buy it? And
2. "Does it have the right team to solve that
problem?"
Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most widespread by far.

Imagine them like the reserve currency of the crypto
world – if you wanted to invest in other cryptos, then
you have to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum with your local
currency first. Then you buy the other cryptocurrencies
with your Bitcoin or Ethereum.
If you don’t want to buy the cryptocurrencies

themselves, you can always buy a Bitcoin fund or Bitcoin
tracker. I did this for my daughter in her Junior ISA and it

went up 98% making her just under £2,000 in just 3
months.
This might not seem like a lot of money but £2,000 in 3
months isn’t bad for an 8-year-old!
How to start buying Bitcoins,

Ethereum and other Altcoins
Generally, you have to buy Bitcoin with your fiat money

first. Then you can buy other altcoins with Bitcoin.
There are two ways of buying Bitcoin – through
an Exchange or Direct.
1. Exchanges
a. Fiat Exchange
Cryptocurrency exchanges are websites that allow you
to buy, sell and exchange cryptocurrencies for other
digital currency or fiat currencies like USD or Euro.
The exchanges require you to open an account and verify
your identification.
b. Coin Exchange
These are websites that connect buyers and sellers
where they charge certain fees for a completed
transaction.
Examples of Coin Exchanges:
i. Poloniex – This is the first one I ever used

ii. Bittrex – This is the second one I opened –
I like this one better
iii. Kraken – This is the third one I opened
iv. Coinbase – This is the best known. No idea
why I haven't used it but I haven't
An important note: Opening these accounts is simple but

it is not easy. We are at the beginning of a new
technology here. Things are getting better but as a
beginner it might seem very convoluted at first.
2. 2.
Direct
Direct
One of our traders here used localbitcoins.com to
exchange GBP into BTC. “I found a seller selling BTC at a
predetermined price, got myself verified as per their
instructions. And then made a bank transfer to them. The
BTC were held in escrow until payment was received. As
soon as the payment has been confirmed the BTC are

released. I then transferred my BTC from the site into an
exchange.”
As always, please do your own research and due
diligence.
Which strategies to use
Once we have opened up our accounts, we can start to

invest in the coins. Stick to the major ones for safety first
while you test the market.
As far as a strategy is concerned, use the Value Cost

Average Strategy we describe in this book.
How do you keep your

cryptocurrencies safe and store them?
To start investing in cryptocurrencies, the first thing you

would need is to set up your digital wallet. In the
cryptocurrency realm, the term used is “wallet”. The
wallet can be likened to a bank account, which can be
stored in different devices.
The reason you need to do this is because there are

countless stories of people losing their cryptocurrencies.
Safety is paramount here – you don’t want to build up a
small fortune only to lose it all.
There are 4 ways to store your coins:
1. An exchange
This is where you keep it on the exchange you use
to trade on. The most dangerous solutions as
exchanges have been hacked.
2. An online wallet
This is where you transfer your coins to online
wallets (either online, or on your PC or phone).
Anything online can still be hacked.
3. An offline wallet
a.k.a. cold storage or hard storage – this is where
you store your private key on a special USB stick
and so it is off grid. This is almost impossible to
hack.
4. Paper Wallet
This is where you can literally write down your
private key on a piece of paper. Impossible to
hack but don’t lose the piece of paper!
With all the above, follow these 3 Rules:

1. Always back up your wallet, no matter which
ones you use
2. Keep your software up to date if using software
3. Use whatever extra security there is available
such as 2 Factor Authentication. Use Google
Authenticator where possible as opposed to text
in case someone clones your phone.
Summary: If you are planning to trade with your money

(not invest), then leave it on the exchange, but if you are
planning to hold it longer term then it is worth keeping it
safe in a wallet.
If you have larger investments – you need to decide what

that means - it is definitely worth putting into cold
storage. Better safe than sorry!
How to make money out of it i.e.

when to sell it
We are at the beginning of cryptocurrencies as a

technology, so there could be enormous upside
potential. Therefore, unlike the normal VCA where we

are looking for 15-20% upside with a safe investment,
with cryptos we are looking for 100% upside or more
before we start taking profit. I won’t sell more than
10%. Consider taking 10% profit every time it doubles in
value.
We are looking at the maximum upside. If there is one

thing I have learned it is that you have to allow your
winners to run if you want to make a lot of money. We
are definitely holding for the long-term upside potential.
If, however you are more advanced and you see the price
go up and down sideways like a Buffalo formation, you
can consider buying more as it drops and sell as it goes
up, keeping your original money in for the long term
upside. In other words, you are trading a smaller amount
while waiting for your main investment to break out to
the upside. This just makes good logical sense.
Are there any drawbacks?
There are several drawbacks to cryptocurrencies. This is

a totally new and unregulated industry, meaning if you
are hacked and someone takes your Bitcoins, you will

not be compensated. Also, new launches of coins
are increasing and no-one knows which ones will vanish
and which ones are here to stay. Due to this uncertainty,
price swings of 30%+ in a single day up or down
are not uncommon. Therefore, at the moment,
only invest money you are willing to lose.
Overall, there are 4 disadvantages of cryptocurrencies:

1. Lack of understanding about cryptocurrency.
2. Lack of consumer protection and guarantee.
3. Technical shortcomings
4. The industry is still developing
The future of cryptocurrency
I do think cryptocurrency is here to stay. To suggest

otherwise would be like saying the internet was a fad
when it first started. Of course, hindsight is a great thing.
Which cryptos are here to stay, however, is almost
impossible to guess.
The growing level of acceptance of Bitcoin is clearly

bringing this alternative currency to the mainstream.
Some companies are genuinely considering investing in
this currency, further fuelling its journey to the world of
financial currency. Countries such as Japan have even
formally accepted it as a currency.
Are we going to witness a new norm of currency through

cryptocurrency one day? Researchers concluded that it is
still too early to predict that it would, but one thing is for
sure that this currency is slowly making its way in the
world.
Is it too late to get into

cryptocurrencies – have I missed the
boat?
It is still very early on and new developments, coins and

ideas are being generated almost on a daily basis. We are
just at the start. Anything could happen. Get involved.
There will no doubt be new cryptos that will also have
meteoric rises which you can get into. Some haven’t even
been invented yet.
Whether you are in the know and can buy in time is

another matter altogether. I only started less than 12
months ago and have doubled my money. I am planning
to make A LOT MORE. I hope you do too.
CHAPTER TEN
YOUR MODEL FOR

PROVEN SUCCESS
So, you have the motivation and you have the strategies.
Here are some things you will need before you get
started:
• Decide on a broker
• Decide how much money you want to
start with
• Decide on who is going to help you get to
where you want to go fast
Decide on a Broker
We need to use a broker to buy and sell, sell short and

buy back public companies. Every time we do that we
have to pay the broker. So we pay every time we buy AND
every time we sell. The general rule is that we don’t want
to pay the broker more than 1% of what we are investing
i.e. if you are investing £1,000, then the broker fees
should not be more than £10. Notice that the more you
invest, the less the broker will cost – generally the broker
fees don’t change i.e. if you are investing £10,000, the
broker will still only charge £10 or 0.1%. Much better!
There are several types of broker:
1.Full service broker

Some people like to use what is called a Full Service
Broker. What this means is that they will do more than
just fulfill your order. Using the research they have, they
will help you invest and even recommend investments
that they believe to be right for you. This might sound
handy, especially when you are starting out, but before
you go down that route consider the following:
1. You are relying on someone else’s opinions.
We at Investment Mastery believe you should take

control of your own finances. If you rely on someone
else, you are never going to learn the strategies. What if
that broker is good and then either retires or leaves the
brokerage house? You are left high and dry, again not
knowing what to do. You are reliant on the broker. We
want to avoid this at all costs. This book is about ensuring
that you are never reliant on anyone else again.
2. They are more expensive.
Enough said. We are here to make money and any costs

automatically bite into our profits. Remember that
especially with VCA and any strategy where you are
buying every month, you are going to have to pay the

broker every time. If you have £100 to invest, you need
to find some deep discount brokers who understand
what you are looking to do. A £10 broker cost on a £100
investment is unacceptable, as you will be down 10%
before you even start
3. They don’t generally invest themselves in the

companies they recommend to you
I only take advice from someone who is doing it

themselves and buying the companies they recommend
i.e. walk the talk. I remember a broker calling me up from
New York, asking me to invest some money in a
company. “Mr de Maria, all I am asking is that you put a
small amount of money down, just $5,000, and when I
make you some money then we can talk about putting
more in.” That sounded ok but when I asked him how
much money he was putting into the stock, he replied,
“We aren’t allowed to invest in the companies we
recommend.” Now that might be a fact, but if he isn’t
investing himself, then I am not interested.
So we use an online deep discount broker – the less

expensive the better.
2. Online Deep Discount Brokers
These brokers are online – you generally don’t phone

them up although some of them allow you to do just that
or email them or go on a live chat. You simply place your
order online and it is all done for you online. No need to
talk to anyone. The main reason to use them is that they
are cheap.
3. Spread Betting and CFD brokers

like YourTradingbroker.com
A CFD broker comes into play once you have mastered
the Buffalo strategy. A CFD broker allows you to put less
money on every trade, but still make the same amount
of gain or loss as if you were with a local broker. So while
a normal broker might require you to place $2,500 on a
trade, with a CFD broker you only need $250. This means
that you will be able to put many more trades on than
with a normal broker. Generally speaking, these brokers
are to be used for short term trading only, not for long
term investing.
Decide how much money you want to

start with
People often ask how much money they need to start.

Generally, we believe that £2,000 is the minimum
amount, although of course with a ‘leveraged broker’ you
can start with as little as £500. You need to have a
reasonable amount of experience and skill when dealing
with a leveraged broker and so really you are looking at
£2,000. The reason is so that you can make at least 2
trades and not put your money in 1 stock. Remember
that we don’t’ want to be spending more than 1% on the
broker, so £1,000 will be the absolute minimum per trade.
Remember that this is just the beginning. The first law of
compounding is to start with as much money as possible.
The 2nd law of compounding is to consistently add as
much money as possible to your account every single
month. Please, please remember to do this. Almost no-
one does and they are missing out on a LOT of profits.
Remember that you don’t need to make more % gains
every month of years, you just need to reinvest your
profits and keep adding money to your account. In turn,
the same % gains on your larger lump sum will literally
work wonders. So once you know how to make say 3% a
month you literally have set yourself up for life.
CH A PT ER EL EV EN
HOW TO TAKE YOUR

FIRST STEP TO
BIG SUCCESS
Decide who is going to help you get to

where you want to go… fast
A vital short-cut to financial success is to find someone

who’s already where you want to be and copy what they
do to get the same results. This is called, ‘modelling’
success.
What this does is speed up the process times 10. You can
go through the long hours of work, the failures and
frustrations, the losses, not to mention a lot of money
etc. and it would take you many years. If you want to do
it ten times faster, follow these steps
a. Find someone who is where you want to be

b. Make sure that they are willing to share with you
how they did it – ask them to share it with you
c. Do what they did, hopefully with their help
The most difficult thing to do is to actually find someone

who is willing to share it. Not that they are bad people,
but what is the incentive for them to do it? They are busy
doing it and making money, why should they spend time
and effort helping you?
There has to be some exchange of value – it might be

money or maybe you can help them with something, so
you exchange services. Ask them how you can help them.
Most people are so busy trying to find out how the other
person can help them, they never stop to think to ask the
other person how they themselves can help the other
person.
I personally went on many seminars before I finally met

someone who was willing to take me by the hand and
show me exactly what he was doing. It was hands-on 1-1
mentoring and therefore cost me a small fortune. But it
was worth it - only then did I start making money
consistently. I also worked out that for every £1 I spent, I
have made £56 back. Now I am happy to spend as much
as I can on my education, because I know that educating
myself makes me a fortune.
I always say that the goal of speeding up your journey is

best accomplished by finding someone who is where you
want to be, doing what you want to do and who is willing
to share the knowledge of how they got there. Not easy.
Why should someone who is doing what you want to do
spend time with you showing you how they did it?
Sometimes people come up to me and ask,
“If you are so successful, why are you showing other

people how to do it?” There are many reasons for this,
including the following:
I have the time – although I am always doing other things,

like raising money for business start-ups and now setting
up a fund. After 8 years of single-handedly delivering all
the training, I finally allowed other people to do it and it
has been a great success.
It is also our way of giving back – something I never

thought of doing before going on a 3-day seminar called
Unleash the Power Within (UPW) by Anthony Robbins in
Cardiff back in 1999. That seminar changed my life and I
became part of his leadership team for several years
before starting Investment Mastery, the training
company that has just celebrated its 10 th anniversary.
Tony taught me the importance of contribution and this
is my way of giving back.
The other reason is because of what we saw was
happening in the industry. There were one or two
prominent seminar companies organising big events with

200 – 500 people in the room. It is almost impossible to
learn in this way. So we decided to turn the industry
upside down and only have small groups with a computer
each and the best follow up support in the business. I
remember the biggest player at the time saying to my
idea of only keeping the classes small, “Huh, as soon as
your business grows you will increase the number of
people in the room. It’s just the way it is.” Well we never
did that, we still have small groups to this day because
that is the only way to learn properly.
Then there are our trainers who really are second to

none.
Our current head stocks trader and trainer, Dennis,

comes from a background of service but had no former
financial education. Prior to joining Investment Mastery,
he lost over 70% of his account in two years.
However, Dennis was committed and upon learning the

strategies that we teach here at Investment Mastery he
has averaged 4.53% every month for the past 3 years.
Furthermore, he is currently averaging 8% a month on
our more advanced strategies.
With these results, Dennis is certain that if he can learn

to trade, anyone can - with the right guidance. It is his
mission to teach others how to become successful
traders and investors. What makes him such a great
teacher is that he has been where you are now. He was
once a complete beginner but now a consistently
profitable trader AND trainer.
Then there was our previous head stocks trainer Paul –

who was with us for 7 years - who loved helping people.
He had such a big heart and would have done anything
to help our students. For example, because he knew that
people like to look at stocks before they go to work, he
would get up at 5:30am to go through the watchlists for
them. Amazing. He always said to me, “Marcus we are
not teaching our students how to trade, we are teaching
them how to become traders”. What’s the difference
you might ask? It is an important distinction because
most people don’t identify themselves as being able to
make money in the stock market. Once you have that
identity everything changes.
That is why we have so much success. Or should I say,

that is why our students are so successful. To us it is the
same thing – the more successful you are the more
successful we are. Paul often shook his head and said

“Our graduates learn in 4 months what took me 4 years”.
How true. We are proud of this.
What is the difference between a coach and a mentor? A

coach has a toolbox full of goodies that will help you get
from where you are now to where you want to go but
they haven’t necessarily made it themselves.
A mentor is different. A mentor is already where you
want to be and they can show you experientially the way
THEY did it themselves.
At Investment Mastery we have a range of coaches and

mentors who are both able and willing to share their
knowledge with you.
The best thing you can do right now is to attend one of

our 1-day masterclasses in London. Try to avoid 2-3-hour
evening sales pitches that are on offer around the UK.
You won’t learn anything of any value in that amount of
time – it is simply too short a time. Our 1-day masterclass
is a full day of training designed specifically to get you
started in trading and investing. Starting at 10am, it
finishes at 6pm, so allowing 1 hour for lunch, we are
talking about 7 hours of content, plenty of time to get

your questions answered and to meet our team. It is the
ultimate beginner's guide to trading and investing.
There are 5 different parts to the 1-day event:
Part 1
• Trading and investing – is it what we want and
need?
• Truths about the stock market
• Is Buy and Hold dead?
• The formula for Financial Freedom
• 8th Wonder of the World – explained like never
before
• The 5 ways of speeding up your journey towards
financial wealth
• How you can be sure that you are on the right
path every single month
Part 2
• What is the best way to invest?
• Why you have more chances of making money
than the professionals
• The best chart patterns for Trending Stocks

• The best chart patterns for Oscillating Stocks
• Indicators – how they can help to enter and exit
• The most widely used indicators for Trending
stocks
• The most widely used indicators for Oscillating
stocks
• What is Short Selling, when should it be used and
why should you spend 50% of your time doing it?
Part 3
• The fastest way to earn money trading and
investing
• The 4 Factors every successful strategy should
have
• The 3 strategies every beginner should know
• The 2 strategies advanced people need to know
• Ratios: the REAL secret behind trading
• The reasons you are losing money and why?
• The risks of trading and how to minimise them
• Risk Management: the essential part of trading

that most people don‘t know and how to keep it
low
Part 4
• What are Precious Resources?
• Which ones you should be buying right now?
• A discussion about gold, silver, oil and platinum
Part 5
• My proven formula for trading and investing
success
o PS + SG + CE + FS = Consistent profits
• Discover which strategies are the right ones for
you, your character and lifestyle
• Discover what your real motivational factors are
for success
I’ve had one person tell me that they learned more

practical, hands on ways of trading on this 1-day course
with me ... than on a 2 day seminar where they had paid
£2,000! Another person told me that he took one
strategy from the course and made £10,000 in 2 months.
He was so impressed, he organised for me to speak to

200 people in Leeds.
Who is the 1 day Trading and

Investing Day ideally suited for?
There are two types of people who benefit the most.

Firstly, you are the kind of person who wants to know
how to make money in stocks, but you might also be
thinking that your job just isn’t giving you quite enough
cash-flow to do what you want in life. So the first person
wants more cash-flow.
The second person is looking at their retirement and then

looking at their pension and thinking that their pension
isn’t big enough to look after themselves and their
families. So the second person wants to grow their
wealth.
That’s what I wanted to do and I wanted to do it as fast

as possible. Some people want to do both: generate
cash-flow and also grow their wealth.
What Next?
I hope you have enjoyed the contents of this book. It was

written to assist anyone trying to overcome the
obstacles in their lives that have prevented them
from becoming wealthy in the past. Our aim is to
circulate it to as wide an audience as possible. My own
personal mission is to help as many people as I can in
this field as I faced the same problems before I
discovered the principles outlined in this book.
If you want to fast track your trading and accelerate

your learning, why not attend our One Day Stocks
Trading and Investing Masterclass. Normally priced at
£97, we do have seasonal offers which you can take
advantage of by following the link below:
Stocks Trading and Investing Masterclass

investment-mastery.com/events
APPENDIX I – CASE
STUDIES
Dennis Sahlström
Stock Market Graduate and
Investment Mastery Head Trader
and Trainer
I have been trading and investing since 2012 and making a consistent
profit of 4.53% per month since 2016. I am now trading over 6 strategies
in the crypto and stock markets and am making over 10% per month on
some accounts.
However, I have not always been so successful. During my first 2 years of

trading I lost 70% of my account due to my lack of financial education. I
made every single mistake you can think of and probably invented a few as
well. I worked as a tour guide, ski-instructor and even an Au-pair, so when
I say I have no financial education, I mean it.
Since meeting Marcus de Maria though, I have gone from consistently

losing to consistently making money. I even moved to the UK in order to
help other people become successful too. I am now, together with Marcus,
teaching thousands of people all around Europe how to trade and invest.
I have made it my mission to help millions of people to AVOID losing 70%
of their accounts, but more importantly, to create a second income stream
and become financially free through trading and investing.
I know firsthand the ENTIRE journey from being a losing trader to becoming
a profitable one which is why I am so suited to training because I’ve been
there and done it. I am also patient, have a passion for inspiring and I’m
fun and down to earth too.
What is the secret to my success? To model success AND to never ever give
up. In other words, keep going until you succeed. If I can do it EVERYONE
can absolutely make it happen.
As well as Head Trader and Trainer for Investment Mastery, I am also the
Co-Author of the Swedish version of Marcus’ publications The Lunchtime
Trader and Profiting from Cryptocurrencies. I also write articles for Trijo
News, the leading cryptocurrency news company in Sweden.
Investment Mastery helped me and now I want to help you.

Dennis Sahlstrom
My results in 90 days
“If I can do it EVERYONE can absolutely make it happen.”
Glenn Codd -
Forex Graduate
“The first 6 months I made about
3 to 4 % a month”
When the Global Financial Crisis happened, I was running a business that
was involved in raising commercial finance. Virtually overnight my business
dried up as the banks decided to stop lending to companies, and this went
on for the next 6 months. This event, alongside some health issues I was
having, made me take a serious look at what I was doing. I had to find
an alternative source of income that was more reliable, that would not
evaporate due to influences that I had no control over. I had a lot of fears
about the future at this time, a feeling of loss of control and not knowing
what was around the next corner.
In September 2012 I decided to join the Investment Mastery Forex training
program. I had already been to some of Marcus’ other events and was
happy to choose his company to train with. I virtually traded for the
first month, but wanted to go live as quickly as possible, so I started live
trading with small amounts to limit the risk. The first 6 months I made
about 3 to 4% a month and then took a hit as I had a couple of losing
months in October and November. I missed a few winning trades due to
work commitments and this skewed my results. These were testing times
mentally, and I used December to review what I was doing. I also talked to
the Investment Mastery traders to check that what I was doing was on the
right track. I made some changes for the New Year, including introducing a
new strategy and have got back into profit again.
To anyone thinking of coming to learn how to trade with Investment Mastery
I would say, definitely come along, they are a first class organisation. The
whole set up is good and they really deliver on what they promise in the
classes. With Investment Mastery the follow-up support is where they
really excel; I go on two webinars a week and talk on the forum to other
traders, which really helps.
Above all these guys actually trade what they teach, they are not just a
training organisation, they actually do it day-to-day. You can talk to the
traders and find out what they are doing to learn more. This is very
important and makes such a difference to your confidence in the company
and the trading strategies.
Stefan Carlin –
Stock Market Graduate
“I increased my account 39%
in 5 months”
I have always been interested in trading and the stock market, but have
been working in the family business for the past 22 years, and was not fully
satisfied. We provide flame retarding treatments for timber. A couple of
years ago I had a period when I started to re-evaluate my life and came to
the decision that how I spent my time was more important than money. I
needed to find a way to escape the business and now it’s in a place where
I no longer need to work in it full time. From this place that I decided to
find a company to teach me about trading the stockmarket, which was
something I always wanted to do. I saw Marcus on a TV program and later,
when I came across Investment Mastery, it felt like fate, so I signed up.
I came to the Stocks Two-Day Event in April 2012 and signed up for the
Inner Circle there and then. I decided to really go for it and commit and
started trading stocks immediately, initially with some losses. The main
problems I had were mindset ones, I took too many risks and didn’t have
the discipline to manage my trading. Later that year I did the Forex Two-
Day training and moved away from the stocks to trade currencies.
The Investment Mastery training was very useful and the guys who took
it were great. I attend all the webinars and managed over time to develop
the discipline needed to trade successfully. I don’t take any wildcard trades
anymore and religiously keep a trading journal. And from September 2013,
about 5 months, I have been consistently profitable, increasing my account
39.6% in that time.
It has been a fantastic experience. For anyone thinking of attending the
training I would suggest that they don’t do it half-heartedly. Suspend your
skepticism, go with an open mind and commit to it fully. I am now doing
the thing I have a passion for and am full time trading.
Kitty Frericks – Stocks &

Forex Graduate
“One of the most important
methods is the follow up support”
I have been trading since 2004, but I was looking for a method to make
me a lot more consistent profit than I use to make. I researched a lot of
different courses and found that Marcus and his methods are what I have
been looking for. The methods and strategies that Marcus uses appealed
to me a lot as I found it to be a fantastic way to trade.
One of the most important aspects of Investment Mastery’s method is the
follow up support. It is vital to have some support after doing a workshop
in order to learn how to trade. I find this very unique with Investment
mastery as not many institutions offer after care once you attend a
workshop. I can ask my questions and I know someone is always there to
help. I see the IM staff as a trading family as they always give me a good
feeling when I speak to them. I also get the opportunity to meet trading
friends a couple of times a year which is very helpful.
At first I thought it is a bit simple but when I got into it I realised how much
there is to actually learn about trading. During the workshop you go so in
depth to understand all concepts of trading. There is a lot to learn and you
have to put the effort and time in to it. Luckily as mentioned before as part
of the ongoing support we receive from IM we access weekly webinars
where we can speak to the traders directly to get our questions answered.
I also connected with a few people at the workshop and we speak twice a
week about our trading. I find it to be useful and beneficial to work with
someone when it comes to trading.
When I trade, I always put my orders in with a ratio of 3:1 with the stop
loss of 1% of my account. That makes me comfortable. The first month I
was practising on a demo account and then moved on to live trading. The
beginning was not always successful but now I have covered my losses. For
the month of July I am 10% in profit.
I am a lot more confident after being able to learn how to trade and I feel
like my goals are for sure achievable.
Wytze Platenga – Stock

Market Graduate
“I have increased my capital by
21% in 3 months!”
I live in Holland and am trained as a sales manager working in the
pharmaceutical industry. Work opportunities in this sector are not very
good in Holland currently, so when I heard about the Investment Mastery
Stock Market Trading Course I jumped at it and registered. This was around
the end of April 2013 and at this stage I knew nothing about trading.
I really enjoyed the course and started trading on a virtual account to learn
the strategies. This I did for about seven months and it was very successful.
I turned the initial $25,000 to $40,000, which is 60% Return on Investment.
I was very happy with this so started live trading, with real money, on 1st
October 2013. This has also been very successful so far. I have been trading
for 3 months and have increased my capital by 21% already.
I am very pleased with this success and a number of factors contributed
to these results. These include my hard work; I do about 2 hours a day
researching stocks. Also I was very happy with the support from Investment
Mastery, the webinars and online forums are very useful. I also found the
support I got from some of my fellow traders very helpful.
I now have a very realistic goal of becoming financially independent and
looking ahead to enjoying trading even more and learning more too.
Otis Kloeber – Stock

Market Graduate
“Up 40% in Months”
As the conductor of the European Philharmonic Orchestra, I have to be

a master of my art. I therefore assumed that to earn money I need to
give my money to someone who masters theirs. So I gave money to the
professionals, it was quite a large sum, well diversified, and after 1 year it
started to lose money. After 2 years it was down by 25%. Clearly I had to
do something so I decided that I could do it better myself.
I had seen Marcus at some seminars and was impressed by him and the
results that his graduates were achieving, but still a little skeptical because
of my previous experience. The more I listened the more it just made
sense however. So I put into practise what Marcus taught us and realised
it really isn’t that difficult.
I have been trading for 6 months and I can show you my account, and as
you can see I started with $25,000 and it is now $34,643, so that’s $9,643
and 38.5% in 6 months or just under 80% a year. Where else can you find
gains like that in just 10 minutes a day? And by the way this includes all
mistakes as well at the beginning. Remember that I was a total beginner.
For example, once I got in at the wrong time, and another time I forgot to
get out. And that is the great thing about the way that Marcus teaches this
– after the workshop you are very motivated but still he wants you to first
make your ‘Rookie’ mistakes on a virtual trader, so there is no risk at all.
I go on the weekly calls, I can ask others questions on the forum, and each
day I can ask others questions on the forum, and each day that I decide
to go on the Portal, I can learn more, I am never left alone, this keep the
motivation up.
In my full time role as a Conductor I don’t have the time to be trading 5+
hours a day, so I spend either 10 minutes in the morning, or 10 minutes in
the evening. I risk only 1% - that is one of Marcus’ golden rules – but I can
have a 45% gain as well, which I have had as well.
Thank you, Marcus and Investment Mastery!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Today, Marcus is a well-respected stock market and wealth

educator, financially independent, and fulfilling his purpose in life
which is to teach others how to do the same. But it wasn’t always
like this. Not too many years ago Marcus was living on his brother’s
floor and over £100,000 in debt. He realised that the thinking that
got him into this situation was not going to be the same to get him
out of the situation.
Immersing himself with wealth creation education, he came

across a formula for financial wealth. Applying this formula, he
became financially independent in a few short years. As a result,
Marcus started sharing this formula with others. They too became
financially independent … and Investment Mastery, now one of
the leading wealth creation and education companies in the UK,
was born.
It is Marcus’ dedicated mission to empower the people around the

world to create financial wealth for themselves and their families.
He also teaches one of the most misunderstood of all wealth
creation vehicles – stock market and Forex trading & investing, in

a simple, easy to understand way which takes just 20 minutes a
day maximum.
Marcus believes that everyone should have these basic tools to

ensure financial freedom in their lives, in their spare time, so
that they can enjoy life and not have to worry about money ever
again. You can teach your family and friends; your children and
your children’s children. You can do what no-one has ever done
in your family – create inter-generational wealth. He believes
that everyone can do this – you just need to keep practicing long
enough until you get it – and once you have it, you have it for life.
The greatest adversary for Marcus and Investment Mastery is the
Get Rich Quick mentality where people think they can get rich by
doing nothing or get everything for free. Marcus says, “All it takes
is to follow some simple steps and keep going no matter what.”
Marcus is widely known as a dynamic, entertaining and totally
inspiring speaker. He’s shared the stage with legends such as
Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Mark
Victor Hanson, Brian Tracy and Robert Kiyosaki. He is T Harv Eker’s
European Head Trainer for the Millionaire Mind Intensive.
Marcus is the author of the book, ‘Wealth Workout – the Simple

Seven Step Formula for Financial Success’, and the contributor to
leading money, finance, stock market and property publications in
UK. He has appeared on BBC TV’s The Money series (How to Be a
Millionaire).
Marcus is always in demand as a speaker. His down to earth

and approachable style mixed with humour, passion and above
all integrity ensures his ability to connect instantly with any
audience. He excels in delivering, and to deliver top-quality
information in an accessible and fun way, whether he’s addressing
a room of just 50 people or a conference hall of over 5000.

Lunchtime Trader: Marcus de Maria

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Lunchtime Trader: Marcus de Maria

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Learn to trade and invest yourself to

Copyright © 2020 by Marcus de Maria.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

The names of any firms of stockbroker, stock exchange,

total discretion of each individual person. It is recommended

Investment Mastery cannot guarantee any results or

Author: Marcus de Maria

The Lunchtime Trader by Marcus de Maria

This book is dedicated to all of you who have struggled

If you have further questions, please contact Investment

Phone: +44 (0)203 699 9951

The idea behind The Lunchtime Trader is simple: If you

I have to say I didn’t expect it to take off as much as it did.

The markets in the meantime have done what markets

opportunities; China is the talk of the year, with their

I have updated the charts and ensured that the content

WHY MOST PEOPLE

Larry looked at his computer screen with a smile on his

As he looked around the office, he wondered what all his

Why is it that some people manage to achieve great

The quick answer to that is; the actions we take. The

So the question then is what drives our actions? The

It is not our parents, the government, our boss, the

When we finally see that our thoughts, beliefs and

I strongly suggest you read the above paragraphs again,

Your current financial situation is the result of the many

If you want to change your current financial situation or

You would be amazed at how

So where do we start to change these actions taken over

1. Give yourself a reality check (pain) and ensure

Give yourself a reality check

There’s a story about a man driving to the airport. Lost,

In all journeys, including the exciting one you’re about to

“Many people take no care of their money

would you have done? Got a job? That’s what my parents

me because I managed to raise about £100,000 to invest

Let’s fast forward several years. We now own property in

Your Net Worth calculation

Ok so what about you - where are you starting from

Your net worth is the only real measure of your current

So please go ahead now and take the time to

Everything Everything you owe

Now comes the important part. Look at your Net Worth

Is it more than you thought? Great just imagine what

By the way, is your financial situation better than mine?

Critical Net Worth

Why is your Net Worth so important? Because when you

Here’s how it works. How much do you think you need a

Then you would need to have a net worth of £1,000,000

You might be looking at that £1,000,000 number and

So now you know what your focus is going to be. It is on

It’s not magic. It’s called Focus.

If I had been focusing on other things I would NOT be in

We believe that a great way of doing this is via trading

In this chapter we discovered…

• Why some people create wealth and others

• The journey I had to go through – and if you

• Understanding the importance of Net Worth

• Knowing how to target your wealth building

WHY THE STOCK

What is the stock market?

The stock market is a market where stocks and shares of

Ok, well that is the official version anyway. For me the

What is the difference between trading and investing?

stock and sell it in the long term i.e. months to years. We

The main problem is that most people have never

I remember in the early nineties I had invested in a

So, I phoned up the company, my heart pounding, and

It was a lesson well learned and a good thing it happened,

Another mistake is doing buy and hold. This is where you

Another mistake is not using a stop loss. What is a stop

Why the stock market?

In my first book, “The Wealth Workout – the 7 Step

The most popular choices, to help you become wealthy

• Your job, or if you take it seriously, your career